Monday, May 20, 2024, 2:15 – 3:15 pm, Pirate Island
Enjoy free snacks and refreshments while you meet other undergraduates. We’ll also have a few graduate student and faculty mentors who will be happy to answer any questions about the conference, career options, or scientific interests.
All are welcome!
Monday, May 20, 2024, 3:30 – 5:00 pm, Banyan Breezeway
Students and postdocs are invited to the 9th 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.
Members of the VSS Board are indicated with an asterisk* in case you have a specific interest in talking to a member of the board.
David Alais (Professor, University of Sydney, Australia) studies multisensory perception as well as bistable perception and awareness using behavioral methods.
David Brainard (Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania) studies color vision, using psychophysical, physiological, and computational methods. He also has interests in physiological optics, retinal processing, and the role of melanopsin-mediated signals in visual processing.
Johannes Burge (Associate Professor of Psychology, Univ. of Pennsylvania) studies vision with natural images, focusing i) on tasks in optics, depth, motion perception, and ii) on how sensory, perceptual, and motor processing unfolds over time. He uses perceptual phenomena like illusions, and an array of tools—forced-choice and continuous psychophysics, image-computable ideal observers, and other modeling techniques—to understand how human vision works and how artificial vision systems should be designed to work. He interned at Adobe Inc. but didn’t like it much.
Marisa Carrasco (Julius Silver Professor of Psychology and Neural Science, NYU) investigates several aspects of visual perception and attention using human psychophysics, neuroimaging, neurostimulation, and computational modeling to study the relation between the psychological and neural mechanisms involved in these processes.
Miguel Eckstein (Professor of Psychological & Brain Sciences, UC, Santa Barbara) studies attention, search, eye movements, learning, face and medical image perception using psychophysics, computational modeling, and EEG/fMRI techniques. He worked at Cedars Sinai Medical Center and NASA Ames before joining UC Santa Barbara. Messi fanatic.
James Elder (Professor and York Research Chair in Human and Computer Vision and Co-Director of the Centre for AI & Society at York University, Canada). His research seeks to improve machine vision systems through a better understanding of visual processing in biological systems. He has worked at Nortel and NEC Research.
Karla Evans (Senior Lecturer, Psychology, University of York, UK) main interest lies in understanding how perceptual information within and across senses and memory gets integrated into a unified complex percept of the world and is applied to real world tasks such as cancer detection. To study these processes, she uses a variety of techniques from psychophysics, neuroimaging to machine learning.
Krystel Huxlin* (Professor of Ophthalmology, University of Rochester) investigates visual system plasticity with an eye towards restorative potential in adult brains with cortical damage. This is done in both humans and animal models, with approaches including psychophysics, neuroimaging, neurostimulation, cell biology, quantitative microscopy and molecular techniques.
Janneke Jehee (Principal Investigator, Donders Institute, Netherlands) studies perceptual decision-making under uncertainty using a range of techniques, including neuroimaging, computational modeling, and psychophysics. She is also involved in the development of new methods for analyzing behavioral and neuroimaging data.
Kendrick Kay (Assistant Professor of Radiology, University of Minnesota)’s research interests lie at the intersection of visual/cognitive neuroscience, functional magnetic resonance imaging methods, and computational neuroscience. His lab combines expertise across different disciplines, including psychology, neuroscience, neuroimaging, statistics, machine learning, and software engineering.
Talia Konkle (Professor of Psychology, Harvard University) studies high-level visual representation and cortical organization, combining modern deep neural network models with functional magnetic resonance imaging and behavioral methods.
Rich Krauzlis* (Senior Investigator, National Eye Institute, NIH) studies the brain circuits for eye movements and higher-order visual functions (e.g., attention, perception, and object recognition) using psychophysics in humans and combinations of physiological, optogenetic, and psychophysical methods in animal models. He is especially interested in how higher-order visual functions are linked to goal-directed behavior, and how the properties of brain circuits change as we explore and learn about our visual world.
Michael Landy* (Professor of Psychology and Neural Science, NYU) has studied a wide range of topics, including depth perception, sensory cue integration, spatial vision including texture perception, perceptual decision-making, Bayesian models of all of the above, cortical adaptation and metacognition for both perceptual and motor tasks.
Cheryl Olman (Associate Professor of Psychology, University of Minnesota) uses a mixture of behavior, computational models, and functional MRI to study how our brains creates our visual experiences. After 20 years, she’s still stuck on the problem of how visual representations of textures get suppressed when they’re embedded in complex environments. The problem is more interesting than one might think, and fMRI is less informative on this topic than one might hope.
Mary A. Peterson (Professor of Psychology, University of Arizona) uses behavioral and physiological methods to study foreground object detection; in particular influences of memory and context; and semantic activation, competition, and recurrent processing during object detection.
Martina Poletti (Assistant Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Rochester) investigates the interplay of action, attention and eye movements, vision across the foveola, fine tuning of attention and eye movements at the foveal scale and the relationship between fine oculomotor behavior, retinal anatomy and visual acuity, using high-precision eyetracking, high-resolution retinal imaging, psychophysics, gaze contingent display control and EEG.
Martin Rolfs* (Professor for Experimental Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) investigates the architecture and plasticity of processes in active perception and cognition, using a broad range of methods including eye and motion tracking, psychophysics, computational modeling, EEG, studies of clinical populations, and robotics.
Pawan Sinha (Professor of Brain & Cognitive Sciences, MIT) studies visual neuroscience, combining experimentation and computational modeling. He majored in computer science in India and then came to the US planning to specialize in high-performance processor design. But, due partly to his interest in visual art, he soon changed his research focus to visual neuroscience. His lab is exploring the development of visual skills in typically developing children, as well as those who have gained sight after suffering several years of congenital visual deprivation. This effort, named Project Prakash, allows the lab to simultaneously pursue the twin goals of scientific discovery as well as societal service.
Miriam Spering (Associate Professor of Neuroscience, University of British Columbia) investigates how humans interact with their sensory environment through eye and hand movements using human psychophysics, eye tracking and motion capture in healthy adults and patients with movement disorders. She is passionate about supporting students and postdocs and enabling them to identify careers that best suit their interests and values.
Viola Störmer (Assistant Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth University) investigates selective attention, visual working memory, and cross-modal perception using a combination of behavioral methods, EEG, and computational modeling.
Bill Warren (Chancellor’s Professor of Cognitive Science, Brown University) uses virtual reality techniques to investigate the visual control of action, including optic flow, locomotion, collective behavior, and visual navigation. He has had an academic career and collaborated with movement scientists on visual-motor coordination, with biologists on insect flight control, with computer scientists on crowd dynamics, and with safety researchers on emergency evacuation.
Takeo Watanabe (Fred M. Seed Professor of Cognitive, Linguistic & Psychological Sciences at Brown University) takes an interdisciplinary approach to studying vision using psychophysics, fMRI, and computational neural modeling. Research areas include motion perception, interaction of motion and form, attention and perceptual learning.
Yaoda Xu (Senior Research Scientist, Department of Psychology, Yale University) studies the cognitive and neural mechanisms supporting visual working memory, attention, and visual object processing in the human brain with a particular focus on the posterior parietal cortex using methods including fMRI, psychophysics and computational modeling.
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.
VSS 2024 is pleased to announce that the “Just-In-Time” poster sessions for undergraduate students working on independent research projects are now open for submissions. Posters will be presented in person at the annual meeting in one of two sessions, either Saturday, May 18 or Monday, May 20.
VSS welcomes and encourages submissions from a diverse group of eligible students across the globe. To help accomplish this goal we are asking that you share this information with any programs within your institutions that sponsor or promote research for undergraduate students.
The submissions to these sessions are limited to students who:
Space is limited. The window for submissions will open on March 1 and submissions will be accepted through April 1. Presenters will be informed of acceptance by April 11.
You must be a current student member (for 2024) to submit an abstract.
A limited number of travel grants are available for undergraduate students who submit abstracts during the Just-in-Time submission period. Travel application information will be available upon submission of the student’s abstract.
VSS welcomes and encourages submissions from a diverse group of eligible students across the globe. To help accomplish this goal we are asking that you share this information with any programs within your institutions that sponsor or promote research for undergraduate students. For details and to submit an abstract, go to Undergraduate Just-In-time Poster Submission Guidelines.
Abstracts are limited to 300 words. This does not include title, authors, and affiliations. Additional space is provided for funding acknowledgments and for declaration of commercial interests and conflicts.
Your abstract should consist of an introduction, methods and results sections, and a conclusion. It is not required that the sections be explicitly labeled as such. It is, however, important that each abstract contains sufficiently detailed descriptions of the methods and the results. Please do not submit an abstract of work that you are planning to do or work without sufficient results to reach a clear conclusion. Such abstracts will not be accepted.
Per the VSS Disclosure of Conflict of Interest Policy, authors must reveal any commercial interests or other potential conflicts of interest that they have related to the work described. Any conflicts of interest must be declared on your poster or talk slides.
Please complete your submission carefully. All abstracts must be in final form. Abstracts are not proofread or corrected in any way prior to publication. Typos and other errors cannot be corrected after the deadline. You may edit your abstract as much as you like until the submission deadline.
Given the just-in-time deadline, some aspects will differ from regular VSS submissions. Submissions will be reviewed by members of the VSS Board of Directors and designates. Accepted abstracts will appear in the VSS 2024 program, but unlike submissions accepted following the December review, “Just-In-Time” abstracts will not appear in the Journal of Vision.
If you have any questions, please contact our office at .
Submissions Open: March 1, 2024
Submissions Close: April 1, 2024
Undergraduate Travel Award Application Deadline: April 5, 2024
Notification of Accepted Abstracts: April 11, 2024
Undergraduate Just-in-Time Poster Submissions are Closed.
Sunday, May 21, 2023, 7:30– 8:30 pm, Jasmine/Palm
Organized by: VSS Student-Postdoc Advisory Committee (SPC)
Organizers: Claudia Damiano, KU Leuven; Stephanie Shields, The University of Texas at Austin; Maruti V Mishra, University of Richmond
Moderator: Claudia Damiano, KU Leuven
Panelists: Angelica Godinez, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin; Sabrina Hansmann-Roth, University of Iceland; Madhu Mahadevan, Magic Leap; N Apurva Ratan Murty, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Alex White, Barnard College
Career transitions are both exciting and scary. Some of the uncertainty regarding a new role, however, can be reduced by talking to others who have made similar transitions. This year VSS-SPC and FoVea together present a two-part ‘Career Transitions Workshop’ on navigating these diverse pathways, with Part 1: Early Career Panel and Part 2: Where do I go from here? Round-Table Discussion.
Part 1 will feature a panel discussion on early career transitions, from the undergraduate level up through securing faculty positions and jobs outside of academia. A panel of vision scientists with a variety of chosen career paths will discuss their stories, the transitions they’ve gone through in their careers, and how they made the key decisions that led them to their current jobs. After each panelist gives an overview of their story, audience members will be invited to participate in a question-and-answer session with the panel. The panel will include representatives from both academia and industry, so attendees will hear firsthand perspectives both on navigating academia and on transitioning between academia and industry. Especially given the recent layoffs in industry and the pandemic’s lasting impact on hiring in higher education, we hope the panel will provide useful insights into current trends affecting early career researchers and ideas for how trainees can increase their chances of success in today’s professional landscape.
Following this panel discussion, participants will be invited to attend Part 2 of the Career Transitions Workshop, where they can take part in small group discussions and enjoy light snacks and drinks.
Note: All are welcome to attend both parts of this workshop, to only attend Part 1, or to only attend Part 2.
Postdoctoral Researcher, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin
Angie, is a vision scientist and postdoctoral researcher working in Martin Rolfs’ Active perception and Cognition lab at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and in the German Excellence cluster Science of Intelligence. As part of the cluster, her research is aimed at understanding visual processing for perception and action as an attempt to improve current models of perceptual processing and contribute insights to AI and robotics. Prior to her postdoc, Angie received a BS in Psychology and MS in Human Factors and Ergonomics from San Jose State University. During this time, she worked in the Visuomotor Control Lab at NASA Ames Research Center where she conducted low-level vision research (i.e., eye-movement responses to changes in stimulus contrast and luminance) and applied research on the physiological changes due to vibration and acceleration. For her PhD in vision science at the University of California, Berkeley, she worked with Dennis M. Levi on the impact, recovery and possible adaptations of poor binocular vision. While at Berkeley, she completed an internship at NVIDIA where she applied her knowledge of visual processing to gaze-contingent rendering in an attempt to reduce bandwidth and increase rendering speed in computer graphics.
Assistant Professor, University of Iceland
Sabrina Hansmann-Roth, is an Assistant Professor at the University of Iceland and a Co-PI of the Icelandic Vision Lab. She obtained her PhD from Université Paris Descartes followed by postdoctoral positions at the University of Iceland and the University of Lille. She is interested in the mechanisms used to represent information in visual memory. For that, she investigates probabilistic representations of visual ensembles, visual priming and perceptual biases such as serial dependence. She was a former member of the VSS Student-Postdoctoral Advisory Committee and looking forward to this year’s career transitions workshop, sharing her experiences and discussing with ECRs and the other panelists.
Research Scientist, Magic Leap
Dr. Madhu Mahadevan is a vision research scientist at Magic Leap, Inc. She started her career as a clinical optometrist in India with a primary focus on low vision eye care and contact lens management. She then completed her PhD working with Dr. Scott Stevenson on visual attention and eye movements from the University of Houston, College of Optometry, TX. During her doctoral program, she was a research intern at Nvidia, Santa Clara, CA working on auto calibration of eye trackers in virtual reality headsets. After graduation, she joined as a user experience researcher at Human Interfaces, Austin, TX where she used product research methods to help multiple stakeholders interested in enhancing user experience across consumer and enterprise products. She is currently working at Magic Leap, Inc on their augmented reality headset where she uses applied vision concepts and optometric principles in conjunction with product research methods to evaluate design decisions and make optimal choices to help users have a comfortable viewing experience.
Research Scientist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Ratan received his PhD in Neuroscience from the Center for Neuroscience, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. His PhD research with Prof. S.P. Arun elucidated the computational mechanisms underlying viewpoint invariant representations in the monkey inferotemporal cortex. He is currently a NIH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence fellow and Research Scientist at MIT with Profs. Nancy Kanwisher and Jim DiCarlo. In his current research, he uses methods from cognitive neuroscience, human neuroimaging, electrophysiology, and artificial intelligence, to investigate the development and cortical organization of human visual intelligence.
Assistant Professor, Barnard College
Alex White has been studying vision since he first attended VSS as an undergraduate in 2006. He is particularly interested in visual word recognition, selective attention, eye movements, and awareness. He got his PhD working with Dr. Marisa Carrasco at NYU in 2013. After a meandering but fruitful postdoctoral journey, he started a faculty position at Barnard College in 2021. An NIH K99/R00 award facilitated that transition. For more information on his current research, see his lab website. Alex also co-organizes the Visibility events at this conference.
Postdoctoral Researcher, KU Leuven
Claudia Damiano holds a PhD from the University of Toronto (2019) and is currently a Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven) in Belgium, specializing in scene perception and visual aesthetics. Broadly, her research aims to understand how visual features impact aesthetic preferences and guide attention. In her current project, she explores the cognitive and emotional benefits of interacting with nature using eye-tracking and virtual reality techniques. Her work contributes to our understanding of the relationship between human perception and the appreciation of natural environments. Claudia has served as a panelist on similar early-career panels, offering advice to Master’s and PhD students about transitioning to a postdoc position. As a moderator, she will ensure that the panel offers valuable insights and actionable advice to attendees.
Monday, May 22, 2023, 2:30 – 3:30 pm, Banyan/Citrus
Enjoy free snacks and refreshments while you meet other undergraduates. We’ll also have a few graduate student and faculty mentors who will be happy to answer any questions about the conference, career options, or scientific interests.
All are welcome!
Saturday, May 20, 2023, 12:45 – 2:15 pm, Sabal/Sawgrass
Moderator: Krystel Huxlin, University of Rochester, USA
Panelists: Reuben Rideaux, University of Sydney; Martin Rolfs, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin; Miriam Spering, University of British Columbia
Success in obtaining grant funding for your research ideas is a hallmark of success in academia, and increasingly, in private industry. This workshop features panelists who will provide perspectives on strategies to attain funding success. Topics will include: what constitutes a fundable research idea, opportunities and strategies for developing grantsmanship as a graduate student or postdoc – including those pertinent to diversity, how granting opportunities differ in different countries, how grants are evaluated by granting agencies, and best practices for reacting and responding to grant evaluations in a manner that ultimately leads to funding success.
University of Sydney
Reuben Rideaux is an ARC DECRA Fellow at the University of Sydney, and an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Queensland Brain Institute. Prior to this, he was a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Cambridge and a PhD student at the Australian National University. He combines computational modelling, neuroimaging, and psychophysics to study perception and cognition. He has a particular interest in developing new methods for understanding brain function, such as bio-inspired explainable AI, high resolution functional MR spectroscopy, and neural decoding. He leads the ECR subcommittee of the Australian Cognitive Neuroscience Society, and regularly speaks about his work to research groups, clinicians, and the media. In addition to supervision of graduate and postgraduate students, he enjoys participating in public outreach activities aimed at communicating the importance sensory and cognitive neuroscience research to the public, e.g., Cambridge BrainFest, and encouraging school students consider a career in neuroscience research, e.g., BrainBee.
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Martin Rolfs heads the Active Perception and Cognition lab at the Department of Psychology at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He obtained his PhD from the University of Potsdam in 2007, for which he received the Heinz Heckhausen Award, and was a postdoc at Université Paris Descartes and a Marie Curie fellow at New York University and Aix-Marseille Université. In 2012, he established a junior research group at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience before, he was appointed Heisenberg Professor at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in 2018. His research is funded by the German Research foundation (DFG) and the European Research Council (ERC), and he is a core PI at Berlin’s Cluster of Excellence Science of Intelligence.
University of British Columbia
Miriam Spering is Associate Professor in Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences at the University of British Columbia (UBC). She also is Director of the Graduate Program in Neuroscience and Associate Dean of Graduate and Postdoctoral Education in UBC’s Faculty of Medicine. Before moving to Canada, Spering completed her undergraduate (Univ Heidelberg, Diploma in Psychology) and graduate education (Univ Giessen, PhD in Psychology) in Germany and postdoctoral training in the US (NYU, Psychology & Neuroscience). Spering has a notable record of scientific achievements in the vision sciences, with a research focus on eye movements, perception-action interrelations, multisensory integration, and disorders of the sensorimotor system. The recipient of many awards for research and mentorship, she has broad experience in senior academic and research leadership roles, advancing graduate training, interdisciplinarity, and wellbeing, equity, diversity, and inclusivity. Spering is funded by several of the major Canadian funding agencies, and has extensive experience mentoring students to obtain their own fellowship and grant funding.
University of Rochester
Krystel Huxlin is the James V. Aquavella Professor of Ophthalmology and Associate Chair for Research at the University of Rochester (UR)’s Flaum Eye Institute. She also serves as the Associate Director of UR’s Center for Visual Science and co-Director of its Training program. She is a member of the Neuroscience Graduate Program Executive Committee, and an Ombudsperson for graduate students and postdocs at the UR Medical Center. Huxlin earned her bachelors (1991) and doctorate (1994) degrees in Neuroscience at the University of Sydney, Australia. She was an Australian NHMRC C.J. Martin postdoctoral fellow at UR before joining its Ophthalmology faculty (1999). Her work seeks to understand how visual functions can be restored after damage to the visual system, as well as to characterize the properties of, and mechanisms underlying different forms of vision restoration. She holds 10 patents, was the inaugural President of the Rochester SFN Chapter, is an editor at eLife and Journal of Vision, and a member of the VSS Board of Directors.
The Vision Sciences Society announces the 2020-2021 inaugural members of The Student-Postdoc Advisory Committee (SPC)!
The Student-Postdoc Advisory Committee will advise the VSS Board and membership about how events, workshops, meeting structure, and activities can best target the needs of trainee members and attendees. They will be reaching out to trainees to solicit opinions and ideas, as well as organizing special events.
Each year VSS will solicit nominations for new members of the Student-Postdoc Advisory Committee to replace three members who will be rolling off the Committee.
Stacey AstonDurham University
Stacey Aston is a postdoctoral researcher in Durham University’s Psychology Department. In her research, she studies visual and multi-sensory information integration for human perception and decision making. Stacey joined SPC to have a positive impact on the VSS experience for student and postdoc members. She is sure that the newly formed SPC committee will be a valuable asset to the VSS team as they work to enrich the VSS program with many more development and networking opportunities.
Kathryn Bonnen (Chair)New York University
Kathryn (Kate) Bonnen is a Simons Society postdoctoral fellow at New York University (NYU). She earned her bachelor’s degrees in computer science and psychology at Michigan State University and received a Ph.D. in neuroscience from the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to NYU, she was an ARVO/VSS scholar and visiting researcher in the Optometry School at the University California Berkeley. Her research focuses on motion perception, behavioral modelling, binocular processing, and sensorimotor control.
Matthew Boring (Record Keeper)University of Pittsburgh
Matthew Boring is a fourth year PhD student from the University of Pittsburgh. He studies in Dr. Avniel Ghuman’s Laboratory of Cognitive Neurodynamics to understand how visual representations of objects evolve in the ventral stream and how these representations influence visual attention. Within the Student Postdoc Advisory Committee, Matthew is excited to improve VSS for trainees by establishing channels of communication between students, postdocs, and VSS organizing committees. By better understanding the desires and concerns of trainee members, it will be easier to develop programs that improve the value of VSS to them.
Cristina CejaNorthwestern University
Cristina Ceja is a graduate student at Northwestern University pursuing a PhD in Psychology. She is interested in exploring the limits of our visual system in perceiving, processing, and updating visual representations. Currently, she studies how the visual system binds features to objects, and the role of visual attention in this binding process. As a member of the Student-Postdoc Advisory Committee (SPC), she looks forward to building on her existing outreach efforts and committee work dedicated to engaging and advocating for trainees.
Björn JörgesYork University
Björn finished his PhD at University of Barcelona and is currently doing a PostDoc at York University, Toronto, in a project funded by the Canadian Space Agency. His research is focused on the role of vestibular cues for visual perception and how we perceive moving objects while we ourselves are moving through the environment. He is furthermore convinced that open and diverse science is better science.
J. Brendan Ritchie (VSS Liaison)National Institute of Mental Health
J. Brendan Ritchie, Ph.D, is a post-doctoral fellow in the Laboratory of Brain and Cognition at the National Institute of Mental Health (USA), where he is conducting research on the neural basis of visual categorization and category learning. Previously he was a post-doctoral fellow at KU Leuven (Belgium), a research associate at Macquarie University (Australia), and a graduate student at the University of Maryland (USA), where he obtained his doctoral degree. Brendan is excited to be a part of SPC, and wants to help make VSS more responsive to the interests of early career researchers in vision science.
Monday, May 22, 2023, 3:30 – 5:00 pm, Banyan Breezeway
Students and postdocs are invited to the 8th 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. If you would like to attend Meet the Professors, please complete this Registration Form. Registration will close on April 21, 2023, or when all spaces are filled. See below for this year’s professors.
Members of the VSS Board are indicated with an asterisk* in case you have a specific interest in talking to a member of the board.
David Alais (Professor, University of Sydney, Australia) studies multisensory perception as well as bistable perception and awareness using behavioral methods.
Brian Anderson (Associate Professor, Texas A&M University) studies how the control of attention is influenced by learning, using behavioral and cognitive neuroscience methods. His academic journey began as a part-time community college student.
Ben Balas (Professor, North Dakota State University) studies visual recognition in children and adults, with an emphasis on the role of experience in shaping face and texture recognition. He uses behavioral and computational methods and also uses EEG and eye-tracking in his research.
David Brainard (Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania) studies color vision, using psychophysical, physiological, and computational methods. He also has interests in physiological optics, retinal processing, and the role of melanopsin-mediated signals in visual processing.
Johannes Burge (Associate Professor of Psychology, Univ. of Pennsylvania) studies vision with natural images, focusing i) on tasks in optics, depth, motion perception, and ii) on how sensory, perceptual, and motor processing unfolds over time. He uses perceptual phenomena like illusions, and an array of tools—forced-choice and continuous psychophysics, image-computable ideal observers, and other modeling techniques—to understand how human vision works and how artificial vision systems should be designed to work. He interned at Adobe Inc. but didn’t like it much.
Marisa Carrasco (Julius Silver Professor of Psychology and Neural Science, NYU) investigates several aspects of visual perception and attention using human psychophysics, neuroimaging, neurostimulation, and computational modeling to study the relation between the psychological and neural mechanisms involved in these processes.
Monica Castelhano (Professor, Queen’s University) studies how context and real-world knowledge affects perceptual processes, memory and attention and visual search. In her research, she uses a variety of methodologies including EEG, eye movements and virtual realtity to examine behavior in virtual environments.
Sang Chul Chong (Professor, Yonsei University) studies ensemble perception, visual awareness, and attention, using psychophysics and eye tracking.
Miguel Eckstein (Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara) studies attention, search, eye movements, learning, face and medical image perception using psychophysics, computational modeling, and EEG/fMRI techniques. He worked at Cedars Sinai Medical Center and NASA Ames before joining UC Santa Barbara. Messi fanatic.
James Elder (Professor and York Research Chair in Human and Computer Vision and Co-Director of the Centre for AI & Society at York University). His research seeks to improve machine vision systems through a better understanding of visual processing in biological systems. He has worked at Nortel and NEC Research and is co-founder of the AI start-up AttentiveVision.
Marc Ernst (Head of Applied Cognitive Psychology, Ulm, Germany) has a background in Physics and Cognitive Science. He worked at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, UC Berkeley, and at Bielefeld and Ulm University. His research interests are in multisensory perception and action (vision, touch, audition, vestibular, navigation, grasping), perceptual-motor learning, Human-Machine Interaction, and VR. Studies use both behavioral and computational modeling methods.
Debbie Giaschi (Professor, Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, University of British Columbia) studies motion perception, binocular vision and reading in children and adults using psychophysics and MRI techniques. She is particularly interested in atypical development due to amblyopia or dyslexia.
Todd Horowitz (Program Director, Basic Biobehavioral & Psychological Sciences, NCI) is a cognitive psychologist, with a B.S. from Michigan State University (1990) and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley (1995). From 1995 to 2012, he worked at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He started as a post-doc with Jeremy Wolfe and then in 2000 was promoted to the faculty. He spent 12 years as a soft-money Principal Investigator before moving to the National Cancer Institute, where he is now a Program Director (i.e., program officer) in the Division Cancer Control and Population Sciences. He has published more than 80 peer-reviewed research papers. Currently, he is working to engage cognitive psychologists and vision scientists with problems in cancer control, such as improving medical image interpretation, studying the cognitive effects of cancer and cancer treatments, and improving the effectiveness of visual health communications.
Kendrick Kay (Assistant Professor, University of Minnesota)’s research interests lie at the intersection of visual/cognitive neuroscience, functional magnetic resonance imaging methods, and computational neuroscience. His lab combines expertise across different disciplines, including psychology, neuroscience, neuroimaging, statistics, machine learning, and software engineering.
Michael Landy* (Professor of Psychology and Neural Science, NYU) has studied a wide range of topics, including depth perception, sensory cue integration, spatial vision including texture perception, perceptual decision-making, Bayesian models of all of the above, cortical adaptation and metacognition for both perceptual and motor tasks.
Sam Ling (Associate Professor, Boston University) uses psychophysics and brain imaging techniques to investigate the neural mechanisms that support basic vision, as well as to understand how early visual processes change in response to top-down signals, such as attention, learning, arousal and memory.
Rob McPeek (Professor, SUNY College of Optometry) studies eye movements, attention, and visual search in humans and monkeys, using behavioral and neural recording techniques. He formerly worked at The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute.
Mary A. Peterson (Professor of Psychology and Director of the Cognitive Science Program, University of Arizona) uses behavioral experiments, neuroimaging, and patient work to examine the factors that influence perceptual organization, in particular, the detection of foreground objects against backgrounds. She is a proponent of women in STEM and of interdisciplinarity as exemplified by Cognitive Science.
Pawan Sinha (Professor of Brain & Cognitive Sciences, MIT) studies visual neuroscience, combining experimentation and computational modeling. He majored in computer science in India and then came to the US planning to specialize in high-performance processor design. But, due partly to his interest in visual art, he soon changed his research focus to visual neuroscience. His lab is exploring the development of visual skills in typically developing children, as well as those who have gained sight after suffering several years of congenital visual deprivation. This effort, named Project Prakash, allows the lab to simultaneously pursue the twin goals of scientific discovery as well as societal service.
Viola Störmer (Assist. Prof., Dartmouth College) studies multisensory perception, in particular how sounds affects vision, selective attention, and working memory. Her lab uses a range of techniques to investigate these topics including psychophysics, experimental psychology, and EEG.
Bill Warren (Chancellor’s Professor of Cognitive Science, Brown University) uses virtual reality techniques to investigate the visual control of action, including optic flow, locomotion, collective behavior, and visual navigation. He has had an academic career and collaborated with movement scientists on visual-motor coordination, with biologists on insect flight control, with computer scientists on crowd dynamics, and with safety researchers on emergency evacuation.
Takeo Watanabe (Fred M. Seed Professor of Cognitive, Linguistic & Psychological Sciences at Brown University) takes an interdisciplinary approach to studying vision using psychophysics, fMRI, and computational neural modeling. Research areas include motion perception, interaction of motion and form, attention and perceptual learning.
Yaffa Yeshurun (Professor of Psychology at the University of Haifa) is interested in the interplay between spatial and temporal attention and various aspects of visual perception, including spatial and temporal resolution, internal noise, motion perception, perceived duration, spatial crowding and temporal crowding, relying mainly on behavioral measurements, but also pupillometry and occasionally computational modeling.
Please use our online Meet the Professors Registration Form. Online registration closes on April 21, 2023.
