2025

2025 Pre-Data-Collection Poster Session

Saturday, May 17, 2025, 2:45 – 6:45 pm, Banyan Breezeway
Monday, May 19, 2025, 8:30 am – 12:30 pm, Banyan Breezeway

Organizers: Sabrina Hansmann-Roth, University of Iceland; Bjoern Joerges, York University; William Ngiam, University of Chicago; Yong Hoon Chung, Dartmouth College

It is customary for conference posters to contain at least preliminary results – that is some data has to have been collected. However, criticism and suggestions with regards to the experimental design – a major benefit of poster sessions – would be most helpful before data collection has even started. Receiving feedback at an early stage in research promotes rigorous and impactful science by helping researchers identify confounds, hidden assumptions, or even learn of issues with past attempts before it is too late, cutting down on research waste and enabling suggested changes being implemented to their experiments. This mirrors one of the key advantages of Open Science initiatives like Registered Reports, which adds peer scrutiny of a preregistration before data is collected. Following the positive response to our last two editions, we are organizing another pre-data-collection poster session at VSS2025.

If you are interested in presenting a poster at this session, please submit your proposal via this Google Forms. Registration for this event will be just-in-time, with a May 2nd deadline for abstract submissions, and authors will be notified of acceptance by May 5th. Those selected will be asked to prepare a conference poster which focuses heavily on the theoretical background of the study, and their proposed study methods. Attendance will be capped at a number of 28 participants and spots will be granted on a first come, first serve basis. If you have questions, you can email Bjoern (bjoerges at yorku.ca) or Sabrina (sabrina at hi.is).

We are aware that, under an adversarial, competitive – dare I say capitalist – view of academia, this event may place presenters in a vulnerable position – participation publicizes research ideas without allowing them to formally lay claim through a publication. We encourage poster viewers to be mindful, using this event to establish collaboration with presenters and improve science. We will be creating an Open Science Framework Meetings page if presenters wish to upload their pre-data posters, providing a verification and timestamp of their research proposals. However, ultimately if you are worried about getting scooped, presenting your idea at this event might not be the right decision for you.

!!!!UPDATE!!!!: You can download the abstract booklet here:

BookletDownload

Navigating International Research Funding

Sunday, May 18, 2025, 1:00 – 2:00 pm, Banyan/Citrus

Organizers: MiYoung Kwon (VSS Board of Directors) and Paola Binda (VSS Board of Directors)
Moderator: Paola Binda, University of Pisa
Discussants: Constantin Rothkopf, Technical University of Darmstadt; Tessa Dekker, University College London; Michael Herzog, EPFL – École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne; Frans Verstraten, The University of Sydney.

Exploring Funding Landscapes Across Europe, the UK, Switzerland and Australia

This workshop offers an opportunity to hear how researchers around the world navigate research funding opportunities through country-specific and international mechanisms. The comparison of different systems will provide context and highlight the diversity of funding environments. With a focus on major funding bodies in Europe, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Australia, the session will provide strategic insights into securing competitive research grants and fostering global research collaborations.

Constantin Rothkopf

Technical University of Darmstadt

Constantin Rothkopf is director of the Center for Cognitive Science and Professor at the Institute of Psychology with a secondary appointment in the Computer Science Department at the Technical University of Darmstadt. He did a joint PhD in Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Computer Science at the University of Rochester with Mary Hayhoe and Dana Ballard. His research investigates how vision, cognition, and action are intertwined in naturalistic, extended sequential visuomotor behavior, including tasks such as food preparation and navigation. His research methods involve both behavioral studies, often tracking body and eye movements, and computational modeling, often using probabilistic control models, including developing inverse models in machine learning. His work has been published in journals like Nature Communications and PNAS and machine learning conferences like NeurIPS, and AAAI. He has acquired multiple grants including an ERC Consolidator Grant for his project “ACTOR”.

Tessa Dekker

University College London

Tessa Dekker is a developmental cognitive neuroscientist studying how we learn to see. She leads the Child Vision Lab at University College London (UCL) in the UK, based across the Institute of Ophthalmology and Experimental Psychology. Their research investigates how the developing and adapting brain processes and uses visual information, and how this is affected by eye disease and emerging sight-restoring treatments. Tessa completed her PhD in 2012 at Birkbeck, University of London, followed by a postdoc at UCL with Marko Nardini. From 2016, she has held fellowships from the UK Research and Innovation Economic and Social Research Council, Moorfields Eye Charity, and currently the Wellcome Trust, as well as other industry and charity funding. Since 2020, she is an Associate Professor at UCL, working with a fantastic team that you can meet at https://childvisionlab.co.uk. One of her Departmental roles is to support early career researchers in fund-raising in the UK.

Michael Herzog

EPFL – École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne

Michael Herzog studied Mathematics (1992), Biology (1992), and Philosophy (1993) at the Universities of Erlangen, Tübingen, and at MIT. In 1996, he earned a Ph.D. in biology from the University of Tübingen. He was a post-doc at Caltech (1998-1999) and a senior researcher at the University of Bremen (1999-2004). Since 2004, he is the head of the Laboratory of Psychophysics at the EPFL in Switzerland hosting its own EEG, TMS, eye tracking, behavioral and computer simulation platforms.


Frans Verstraten

The University of Sydney

Frans Verstraten is the current McCaughey Chair of Psychology at the University of Sydney. A VSS board member from 2010-2015 and VSS president in 2013-2014. He studied Experimental Psychology at the Radboud University in Nijmegen and obtained his PhD from Utrecht University (1994). After positions in Canada (McGill, UToronto), USA (Harvard) and Japan (ATR), he became a full professor at Utrecht University in 2000 until his departure to Sydney in 2012. He is one of the editors-in-chief of the journals Perception and iPerception and has successfully written several grants, where the Pioneer Grant (about 2 million US$) by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research was the most prestigious. He has served as a member of grant funding committees in several countries.

Paola Binda

University of Pisa

Paola Binda is associate professor at the University of Pisa, Italy. She trained in Milano (PhD) and Seattle (post-doc), in the fields of active vision and plasticity. Her research is mainly funded by the European Research Council (ERC Starting grant “Pupiltraits”, 2019-2024; ERC Consolidator grant “PredActive”, ongoing). As a trainee, she benefited from a Marie Sklodowska Curie “Global Fellowship”; as faculty, she is member of a recently funded Marie Sklodowska Curie “Doctoral Network” supporting coordinated PhD programs across multiple European institutions.

2025 Elsevier/VSS Young Investigator Award – Leyla Isik

Monday, May 19, 2025, 12:30 – 2:30 pm, Talk Room 2

The Vision Sciences Society is honored to present Leyla Isik with the 2025 Elsevier/VSS Young Investigator Award.

The Elsevier/VSS Young Investigator Award, sponsored by Vision Research, is given to an early-career vision scientist who has made outstanding contributions to the field. The nature of this work can be fundamental, clinical, or applied. The award selection committee gives highest weight to the significance, originality and potential long-range impact of the work. The selection committee may also take into account the nominee’s previous participation in VSS conferences or activities, and substantial obstacles that the nominee may have overcome in their careers. The awardee is asked to give a brief presentation of her/his work and is required to write an article to be published in Vision Research.

Leyla Isik

Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor, Department of Cognitive Science, Johns Hopkins University

The 2025 Elsevier/VSS Young Investigator Award goes to Professor Leyla Isik for her important contributions to the scientific study of social vision. Dr. Isik is the Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor in the Department of Cognitive Science at Johns Hopkins University. After completing her undergraduate degree in Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Isik earned her PhD with Tomaso Poggio at MIT and then conducted postdoctoral research at MIT and Harvard Medical School with Nancy Kanwisher and Gabriel Kreiman in the Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines.

Dr. Isik uses a broad array of neuroscientific and computational methods to study how humans recognize and understand social information from visual input, with a focus on action and social-interaction recognition. In her postdoctoral research, she identified a region in the human superior temporal sulcus (STS) that is selectively engaged when viewing others’ social interactions. Since starting her lab, she has shed new light on these neural processes during natural viewing, showing that social-interaction recognition relies on hierarchical visual computations similar to those used in scene and object recognition but with an additional reliance on dynamic and relational information. Another line of research in her lab has demonstrated how integrating these insights from human cognition can help build better, human-aligned AI vision models. Dr. Isik has received awards and funding from the NIH, NSF, and Google, and she is a dedicated mentor to students and postdocs in her lab. Dr. Isik’s innovative and rigorous research expands vision science into exciting new domains in social cognition.

Seeing social interactions

Humans see the world in rich social detail. We effortlessly recognize not only objects and people in our environment, but also social interactions between people. The ability to perceive and understand others’ interactions is critical to function in our social world, yet the underlying neural computations remain poorly understood. In this talk, I will first argue that social interaction perception should be studied with the same computational vision tools that are now widely applied to other areas of vision, like scene and object recognition. I will then present research from our lab using naturalistic neuroimaging and behavior to show that social interaction information is extracted hierarchically by the visual system along the recently proposed lateral visual pathway. However, unlike scene and object recognition, current AI vision models do a poor job of matching human behavior and neural responses to these dynamic, social scenes. Finally, I will describe our efforts to close this gap by instantiating insights from human social vision into novel neural network models. Together, this research suggests that social interaction recognition is a core human ability that relies on specialized, structured visual representations.

Dr. Isik will speak during the Awards session.

2025 Davida Teller Award – Jody Culham

Monday, May 19, 2025, 12:30 – 2:30 pm, Talk Room 2

The Vision Sciences Society is delighted and honored to award the 2025 Davida Teller Award to Dr. Jody Culham, a distinguished leader whose groundbreaking research has significantly advanced our understanding of how perception and action are integrated in the human brain.

Congratulations to Jody Culham, the thirteenth recipient of the Davida Teller Award. The Teller Award was created to honor the late Davida Teller’s exceptional scientific achievements, commitment to equity, and strong history of mentoring. The award is given to a female vision scientist in recognition of her exceptional, significant, or lasting contributions to the field of vision science.

Jody Culham

Professor of Psychology, Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Immersive Neuroscience at Western University, Ontario

Dr. Jody Culham is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at Western University, Ontario, where she holds a prestigious Tier 1 Canada Research Chair. After earning her PhD at Harvard University under the guidance of Drs. Patrick Cavanagh and Nancy Kanwisher, she completed postdoctoral research with Dr. Mel Goodale at Western. From the outset, Dr. Culham’s innovative approach—combining psychophysics, neuropsychology, and neuroimaging— and direct pursuit of questions of lasting importance, have profoundly reshaped the field.

Dr. Culham was among the first to develop creative functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) paradigms that allowed real-world objects and actions to be studied with neuroimaging. This methodological breakthrough has been a keystone in her approach of “immersive neuroscience”, now expanding to include virtual reality and video games. The approach has significantly advanced cognitive neuroscience by demonstrating how real-world interactions elicit distinct and more robust neural responses compared to traditional proxies like static images and simulated actions. Her foundational studies of the human parietal cortex have illuminated its critical role in planning and executing visually guided actions.

Beyond her substantial scientific achievements—including more than 100 influential publications, over 14,000 citations, and numerous prestigious awards such as the E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship—Dr. Culham is celebrated as a truly masterful mentor. Throughout her career, she has trained numerous graduate students and postdoctoral researchers who have progressed into influential positions in academia and industry. Known for her unwavering support, clear and approachable teaching style, and personal warmth, she has significantly influenced the lives and careers of her trainees. Her widely used educational resources, notably her internationally acclaimed website “fMRI for Newbies,” have provided invaluable guidance to countless early-career researchers worldwide.

Jody Culham has also gone above and beyond for the good of the broader vision sciences community. A dedicated member of the Vision Sciences Society since its inception, she has served in many capacities including Board Member and President, demonstrating outstanding leadership during critical periods, such as guiding the society back to successful in-person meetings post-pandemic. Her extensive contributions extend to other prominent organizations, including roles with the Organization for Human Brain Mapping and editorial positions at eLife and Experimental Brain Research. Jody’s generosity, infectious enthusiasm, and commitment to scientific rigor and community-building epitomize the values represented by the Davida Teller Award.

The Vision Sciences Society is proud to award Dr. Jody Culham the Davida Teller Award in 2025, recognizing her groundbreaking contributions to vision science, her pioneering research methodologies, and her extraordinary dedication to mentorship and community leadership.

Dr. Culham will speak during the Awards session.

2025 Graphics Competition Winners

Each year, VSS holds a Graphics Competition to collect creative visual images related to the field of vision science, the Society, or the VSS meeting. There are two competitions, the Website Banner Competition and the T-Shirt Design Competition. Winning graphic images are featured on the website, program, signage, and t-shirts.

The Vision Sciences Society is pleased to recognize David Yu as this year’s winner of both the Website Banner Competition and the T-Shirt Design Competition.

Website Banner Competition

Winner: David Yu, Senses Lab, The University of Sydney, Australia

T-Shirt Design Competition

Winner: David Yu, Senses Lab, The University of Sydney, Australia

VSS 25th Anniversary Logo
T-shirt Back and Chest Images

This graphic design embodies the relationship between vision and our other senses, aiming to highlight the nature of visual perception. Inspired by my experiences at the Vision Sciences Society conference and the research we do in our Senses Lab, I wanted to create a visual representation that reflects the integration of sight, sound, touch, and cognitive processing.

3MT® Competition for Students and Postdocs

Monday, May 19, 2025, 2:00 – 3:00 pm, St. Petersburg High School

This event is modeled after the well-known Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) competitions held at many universities worldwide. Participating Students and Postdocs will present a 5-minute summary (one slide) of your thesis work to an audience of eager high school students.

VSS will provide transportation to and from the high school for participants.

The audience will vote to choose their favorite, and the winning presenter will win $200!

Who can participate?

Any current graduate student who is working on a dissertation, or any current postdoctoral trainee or postdoctoral research associate who has completed their dissertation, is eligible provided you are registered to attend VSS 2025.  

Does the work I describe have to be my dissertation?

Yes, just like in the Three Minute Thesis® competitions held worldwide. The work may be in progress and your slide can describe preliminary results. 

One slide? 3 minutes?

We’re going to keep to the one-slide policy of 3MT®, but we’ll give you up to 5 minutes.

I already participated in a 3MT® competition. Can I apply to join this event and can I use the same slide?

Yes! In fact, we encourage those who already have their slide ready to apply to join this event.

Where can I find out more about a 3MT®-style slide? Can I see examples?

The 3MT® was developed by the University of Queensland, Australia. Official 3MT® competitions occur worldwide. There is plenty of information on the 3MT® website

What are the benefits?

You benefit and the community benefits. You benefit from the opportunity to explain the essence of your work to an attentive audience who are not experts in your field. The presentations will be followed by opportunities to meet the students in small groups and talk to them about your path: Why did you decide to study vision? How did you prepare? Did you face special challenges? The students attending benefit from the chance to learn something about vision and to be inspired by your example.

OK I’m in. How do I apply?

Send one PDF file containing:

·     Full contact information (name, email, phone, current address)

·     Name of your current research supervisor

·     Name of your doctoral research supervisor (if different)

·     Date your Ph.D. was earned or expected

·     Institution that awarded or is awarding the Ph.D.

The name of the PDF file should be YOURLASTNAME_YOURFIRSTNAME_3MTEXPO.pdf.  Send it to VSS by the deadline of May 1, 2025.  In the event VSS receives too many submissions to evaluate in the allotted time, preference will be given to those who submitted earliest.

The slide you send need not be the final version. If you are selected you will have the opportunity to get some feedback and revise if needed. In particular, strive to design your slide and your talk to reach THIS audience: high school students who don’t know any vision science and don’t know our jargon or why we do what we do nor why it’s important and useful.

Can I attend the event if I’m not speaking?

Unfortunately, the audience will be limited to the high school students and their teachers and the ten VSS participants. The venue will not have room for additional people. 

Will there be virtual options?

The event is in-person only.

Will I get some recognition for participating?

Yes. VSS will acknowledge your participation with a letter from the Board of Directors.

Questions?

Email .

2025 Ken Nakayama Medal for Excellence in Vision Science – J. Anthony Movshon

Monday, May 19, 2025, 12:30 – 2:30 pm, Talk Room 2

The Vision Sciences Society is honored to present J. Anthony Movshon with the 2025 Ken Nakayama Medal for Excellence in Vision Science.

The Ken Nakayama Medal is in honor of Professor Ken Nakayama’s contributions to the Vision Sciences Society, as well as his innovations and excellence in the domain of vision sciences.

The winner of the Ken Nakayama Medal receives this honor for high-impact work that has made a lasting contribution in vision science in the broadest sense. The nature of this work can be fundamental, clinical or applied.

J. Anthony Movshon

University Professor and Silver Professor; Professor of Neural Science and Psychology; Professor of Ophthalmology and of Neuroscience and Physiology, and Investigator, Neuroscience Institute (NYU School of Medicine)

Tony Movshon has been selected as this year’s recipient of the Ken Nakayama Medal for Excellence in Vision Science. This honor recognizes his singular synthesis of the three primary strands of modern vision research—psychophysics, physiology and computational theory—and tireless leadership of the vision science community. Tony is known for foundational research transforming our understanding of the mechanisms representing the form, texture, and motion of objects, how these mechanisms contribute to perceptual judgments and guidance of actions, and how visual experience influences development of these mechanisms. His quantitative analysis of the linearity of simple and complex receptive fields led to formal insights like normalization. His investigation of the nature of motion transparency and coherence led to a cascade model explaining visual appearances. His rigorous use of signal detection theory linked physiological measurements to psychophysical judgments and gaze control. His pioneering studies of visual system development under normal and deprived conditions supported clinical insights into amblyopia.

Tony is also recognized as an exceptionally impactful mentor and role model, who has trained dozens and influenced generations of scientists. Tony’s contributions to the vision science community have been amplified by his service on countless scientific editorial boards and grant review committees and by his role advising, among others, the McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience, the Simons Foundation, the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience, the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, and the Max Planck Society. He established the Center for Neural Science at NYU, the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory summer course Computational Neuroscience: Vision, and the Annual Review of Vision Science. He was elected to the Board of Directors of VSS in 2007 and served as President.

Tony earned a B.A. at Cambridge University in 1972 and continued there to earn a Ph.D. under the supervision of Colin Blakemore in 1975. Since 1975 he has been a faculty member at New York University. Tony’s research contributions have been recognized by the Young Investigator Award from the Society for Neuroscience, the Rank Prize in Optoelectronics, and the Champalimaud Vision Award. He has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the Association for Psychological Science and member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Royal Society of London.

2025 Meet the Professors

Monday, May 19, 2025, 4:00 – 5:30 pm, Banyan Breezeway

Students and postdocs are invited to the 10th annual “Meet the Professors” event. This year’s event will follow a similar format to last year’s. There will be up to five, short, 15-minute meetings in small groups. Chat about science, VSS, career issues, work/life balance, or whatever comes up. Or just connect with a new VSS colleague.

Space will be limited and assigned on a first-come, first-served basis. Each student/postdoc will meet with five professors. See below for this year’s professors.

Registration for Meet the Professors is now closed. We will contact you in the next few weeks to let you know if you have received a slot.

Participating Professors

Benjamin Backus (Associate Professor Emeritus, Suny Optometry, now Chief Scientist at Vivid Vision) In my work at Vivid Vision, I build vision tests and treatments for VR headsets. Our visual field test is in use as an outcome measure in clinical trials of treatments for progressive eye disease, such as AMD, and our treatment for amblyopia is in a multi-site clinical trial by PEDIG at the NEI. We collaborate with scientists at medical and optometry schools and in industry. Some of our work is in low and middle income countries. I am happy to discuss how academia differs from industry.

Chris Baker (Senior Investigator, National Institutes of Health) Studies high-level vision (face, scene, body, object processing) using a wide variety of approaches including fMRI, MEG, brain stimulation (TMS, tES), and behavior (e.g. psychophysics, eye tracking).

Marlene Behrmann (Professor, University of Pittsburgh) My interest is in how the brain constructs a meaningful interpretation from the sparse (wavelength, light intensity) signals from the retina. I conduct psychophysics and neuroimaging studies in normal and brain-damaged populations to address this question, along with developing computational simulations to elucidate the mechanisms that give rise to these behavior-brain correspondences. More recently, I have also been collecting intracranial EEG data in a pediatric population to address questions about the response properties of neurons in the developing visual cortex.

Dirk Bernhardt-Walther (Associate Professor, University of Toronto) Dr. Dirk Bernhardt-Walther studies how our brains interpret complex visual scenes. His research explores the neural mechanisms of perception, using brain imaging and eye tracking to understand how we categorize visual information, recognize shapes, and experience beauty. In his work on empirical aesthetics, Dr. Bernhardt-Walther examines how we perceive and appreciate beauty in our visual world. His interdisciplinary work combines psychology, neuroscience, and computer science to reveal how we navigate and appreciate our visual world.

Kathryn Bonnen (Assistant Professor, Indiana University) Kathryn (Kate) Bonnen’s central research interests are visual perception, sensorimotor systems and the neural computations that underlie visual and sensorimotor processing. Her research relies on behavioral measurements (psychophysics, eye tracking, body motion capture) and computational modeling (of behavior, neural processing and the world). Her work strives, even in laboratory experiments, to understand the visual system and sensorimotor systems in contexts relevant to daily life (e.g., walking, balance, object tracking).

Rowan Candy (Professor, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Indiana University) We study the development of both sensory and motor visual function, grounded in the requirements of tasks in the natural environment.  Most recently, we have been asking how infants and children learn to function using desk- and head-mounted eye tracking with analyses and simulation of scene statistics.

Thérèse Collins (Professor, Université Paris Cité) My research group studies visual perception, eye movements, and object representations. I am interested in how the dimensions of mental representations relate to subjective visual experience, and how representations may change with time and experience. I use both behavioral (psychophysics & eye-tracking) and brain imaging techniques (mainly EEG).

Steven Dakin (Professor, University of Aukland) My background is in psychophysics & computational neuroscience. I started out at UCL working on basic vision (crowding, texture, faces, numerosity…) but mid-career I moved into studying vision in neurodevelopmental and psychiatric disorders. Since 2013 my lab has been based in New Zealand where we have developed open-access eye charts for children and use consumer technology for measuring vision in and out of the clinic. I have experience of UK, US and Australasian grant systems.”

Ben de Haas (Professor, Justus-Liebig University Giessen, Germany) How does perception vary from one person to the next? I use eyetracking, neuroimaging and large scale samples to study the individual way in which we see the world. Why do we look at complex scenes in different ways? Why does typical adult gaze take so long to develop? Why do some of us excel at face recognition, while others struggle? And what can the answers reveal about general biological mechanisms? For recent papers and more, check out individual-perception.com

Chaz Firestone (Associate Professor, Johns Hopkins University) Chaz Firestone (Johns Hopkins University) studies how visual perception interacts (and fails to interact) with higher-level cognition, as well as how vision science interacts (and could better interact) with neighboring fields, including artificial intelligence, developmental psychology, and the philosophy of perception. At VSS, he organizes “phiVis”, a workshop bringing together vision scientists and philosophers of perception to discuss issues of interest to both.

Deborah Giaschi (Professor, University of British Columbia) My students and I study motion perception, binocular vision, and reading using psychophysics and functional MRI. We also collaborate on visuomotor and MEG projects. Our research focuses on typical development and on neurodivergent development due to amblyopia, strabismus or dyslexia. Our lab is located in the Department of Ophthalmology at BC Children’s Hospital.

Michael Grubb (Associate Professor, Trinity College (Hartford, CT)) My lab uses psychophysics and eye-tracking to study the ways in which learned associations impact the reflexive allocation and voluntary control of visual attention. As a faculty member at a primarily undergraduate institution, I place a strong focus on undergraduate research mentorship. I also welcome conversations with graduate students and postdocs who want to learn about careers at small liberal arts colleges, where teaching and research share equal priority.

Nancy Kanwisher (Professor, MIT) My research investigates  functional organization of the cortex in humans, including its development and computational basis.

J. Patrick Mayo (Assistant Professor, University of Pittsburgh) My laboratory studies the influence of eye movements on the activity of visual neurons in the primate cerebral cortex. We record from large populations of neurons in critical nodes of the brain to directly observe how visual information from the retina is transformed into adaptive commands to move the eyes. We also study the eye movement patterns of clinical populations. Our goals are to: 1) facilitate the development of clinically viable treatments of visual impairments; and 2) provide a broad foundation for understanding how the brain links perception and movements.

Ming Meng (Professor, South China Normal University) Are you curious about conducting vision research in the U.S. and China during these “interesting times”? I earned my Ph.D. from Princeton University, completed postdoctoral training at MIT, and served as a faculty member at Dartmouth College. My lab explores the neural mechanisms underlying visual cognition and attention, both with and without visual awareness. These mechanisms are linked to activity within the broader visual processing and attentional neural networks, spanning the occipital, temporal, and parietal lobes in both hemispheres. Our research sheds light on normal behavioral patterns and enhances our understanding of neurological disorders.

Anna C (Kia) Nobre (Wu Tsai Professor in Psychology, Yale University) My research investigates the proactive, dynamic, and flexible psychological and brain mechanisms for anticipating, selecting, prioritizing, and preparing visual sensory and memory representations to guide adaptive behavior. The research uses psychophysics, eye tracking, VR, neurophysiology (MEG and EEG), and brain imaging.

Michael-Paul Schallmo (Assistant Professor, University of Minnesota) The Schallmo Lab is driven to understand how psychiatric & neurodevelopmental disorders affect neural processing, using techniques from visual neuroscience.

Brian Scholl (Professor of Psychology; Chair, Cognitive Science program, Yale University) Work in our group — the Yale Perception & Cognition Lab — explores how seeing relates to (and provides a foundation for) thinking.  Specific topics we have explored lately include visual awareness (e.g. inattentional blindness and motion-induced blindness), the perception of causality and animacy (e.g. in ‘chasing’ displays), interactions between perception and intuitive physics (e.g. with properties such as gravity and support), event segmentation and ‘event type’ representations (e.g. bouncing, rolling), and time perception (including subjective time dilation and object persistence).

Anne Sereno (Professor of Psychological Sciences, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Purdue University) My research approaches range from physiology and modeling to behavior. My research topics range from eye movements, object recognition, spatial processing, and semantics (meaning) to attention and memory.

Ella Striem-Amit (Assistant Professor of Neuroscience, Georgetown University) My lab uses behavioral and fMRI techniques to study people who experienced early sensory and motor deprivation: people born blind, deaf, or without hands. This allows us to explore the principles of how our brain develops and reorganizes in relation to experience, as well as how it generalizes and represents information beyond sensory and motor specifics.

Chiahuei Tseng (Associate Professor, Tohoku University, Japan) I use psychophysical, computational, and neurophysiological tools to study the mechanisms under visual processing. My most recent interest is to extract non-verbal cues (e.g. emotion, togetherness) from body expressions. I worked in the USA and Asia (Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan) as a researcher and faculty member, and I will be happy to share my experiences in these places with interested students.

Johan Wagemans (Professor in Experimental Psychology, University of Leuven (KU Leuven), Belgium) Trained in experimental psychology and psychophysics, expert in perceptual organization, also in relation with visual art and aesthetics, experience with computational modeling, fMRI, EEG, neuropsychology, and autism. Tons of experience with PhD supervision and postdoc mentoring, former VSS board member, former ECVP and VSAC organizer, chair of department, vice-dean of research, many PhD committees and review panels abroad. Former editor-in-chief of Perception and i-Perception, current editor-in-chief of Cognition and Art & Perception. Large research group funded by Flemish Government and ERC.

Alex White (Assistant Professor, Barnard College, Columbia University) My lab studies human visual perception, with an emphasis on selective attention, eye movements, and the limits of the brain’s processing capacity. Those factors play a key role in what you are doing right now: reading. Reading is one of the most important tasks for which humans use their visual systems. Using behavioral psychophysics, eye-tracking, and functional MRI, our primary goal is to investigate the feats and limitations of word recognition in the human brain.

Registration

Registration for Meet the Professors is now closed. We will contact you in the next few weeks to let you know if you have received a slot.

Caregiver Support

As part of VSS’s ongoing commitment to inclusivity, we are pleased to announce the launch of a new initiative for VSS 2025 to help offset costs of childcare at the annual meeting. These funds will make it easier for members with children to attend a wider range of meeting events.

Value: Up to $500 per family. In the event that the number of requests exceeds the funding available, preference will be given to applicants in the early stages of their careers.

Number: Up to 20 awards.

Use of Funds

Recipients can use funds to support childcare in the form that best serves the family. Note that due to logistical constraints, VSS will not be offering an in-house childcare program. Recipients will be responsible for organizing their own childcare solutions. The VSS Discord server, dedicated to VSS participants, provides an avenue for attendees to engage with one another, fostering connections and facilitating the coordination and sharing of services like childcare.

Eligible expenses for the budget can include:

  • Third party dependent care services for the duration of the conference.
  • Travel costs for the designated caregiver.
  • Per diem of up to $50/day for the designated caregiver.

Recommended Childcare Services

The TradeWinds recommends both Jovie.com and Care.com for parents looking to hire babysitters or nannies during the VSS meeting.

How to Apply

The deadline for applications is March 4, 2025. Awardees will be notified by email by March 18, 2025. 

Receipt of Funds

Recipients should come to the registration desk accompanied by the child(ren) to receive the subsidy on the final day of the conference (or last day of attendance).

Schedule

Applications Open: February 11, 2025
Applications Close: March 4, 2025
Announcement of Awards: March 18, 2025

Public Lecture – Patrick Cavanagh

Patrick Cavanagh

Department of Psychology, Glendon College, Toronto, Canada

Using Illusions and Art to Understand the Visual Brain

Monday, May 19, 2025, 3:00 – 4:00 pm, The Dalí Museum, One Dalí Boulevard, St. Petersburg.

Everybody loves illusions. At times, the content on the internet seems to be mostly about illusions – shoes, dresses, straight lines looking bent. This attraction has a long history but illusions are not just for fun, they can also reveal how our vision works. I will present several examples that show how the brain constructs what we see, sometimes in unexpected ways. I will also cover the most compelling of visual illusions: art, where impressions of depth and light arise from nothing more than pigments on a flat surface. Interestingly, painters have discovered many shortcuts that break the rules of physics but go unnoticed. These errors, like impossible shadows, work because our brains take shortcuts too. The errors that painters can get away with reveal which rules do and don’t count for visual perception. We will show how to use art and illusions to do “science by looking” to unlock many of the basic processes of the visual brain.

About our Speaker

Patrick Cavanagh is a Senior Research Fellow at Glendon College of York University in Toronto. He received a B. Eng. from McGill University and a PhD from Carnegie-Mellon University. He has been a professor at the Université de Montréal, Harvard University, the Université Paris Cité and Dartmouth College. He is a leading scholar on vision research where he has pioneered new directions in the study of attention and the position sense – how we know where things are. He has also explored how artists’ techniques offer insight into how the brain works. He has published over 300 articles and book chapters and a book on shadows. He holds an honorary doctorate from the Université de Montréal and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

About the VSS Public Lecture

The annual public lecture represents the mission and commitment of the Vision Sciences Society to promote progress in understanding vision and its relation to cognition, action and the brain. As scientists we are obliged to communicate the results of our work, not only to our professional colleagues, but also to the broader public. This lecture is part of our effort to give back to the community that supports us.

Attending the VSS Public Lecture

Admission to the Public Lecture is free. Registration is required. The lecture will be held on Monday, May 19 at 3:00 pm at the Dalí Museum. Located at One Dalí Blvd., St. Petersburg, 33701.

The Dalí Museum is an approximately ten-mile drive from the TradeWinds Island Grand Resort. On-site parking is available for $10 on a first-come, first-served basis. There are also various surface lots, city parking garages and street parking as well as public transportation. Visit the museum website for more information.

Vision Sciences Society