Moderator: Geoffrey Boynton, University of Washington Discussants: Houmam Araj, National Eye Institute (NIH); Todd Horowitz, National Cancer Institute; Michael Hout, National Science Foundation; and Cheri Wiggs, National Eye Institute (NIH)
You have a great research idea, but you need money to make it happen. You need to write a grant. This workshop will address various funding mechanisms for vision research. Our panelists will discuss their organization’s interests and priorities, and give insight into the inner workings of their extramural research programs. There will be time for your questions.
Houmam Araj
National Eye Institute (NIH)
Houmam Araj., has been with the NIH for over 20 years. He is currently Director of the Lens and Cataract Program; the Oculomotor Systems and Neuro-Ophthalmology Program; the Ocular Pain Program; and the Conference Grants at the National Eye Institute. Dr. Araj is also NEI point of contact for the Diversity/Disability and Re-Entry supplements, and since 2009, he has also been the NEI representative on the CCRP/CounterACT (Countermeasures Against Chemical Threats) Initiative. Over an 18-month period Dr. Araj led the NEI SAVP Program. Prior to becoming Program Director, Houmam served as Scientific Review Officer for ten years: 5 years at the NEI, and 5 years before that at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Among Houmam’s professional activities, and over a 5-year period, he co-led the NIH Common-Fund Transformative High-Resolution Cryoelectron Microscopy (CryoEM) Program as part of the inaugural coordinating committee. He also organized the Ocular Health Subgroup of the Indoor Air Pollution workshop and co-organized the Trans-Agency Scientific Meeting on Developing Medical Countermeasures to Treat the Acute and Chronic Effects of Ocular Chemical Toxicity. Prior to joining NIH, Houmam did a postdoc in the Department of Neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Todd Horowitz
National Cancer Institute
Todd Horowitz, Ph.D., is a Program Director in the Behavioral Research Program’s (BRP) Basic Biobehavioral and Psychological Sciences Branch (BBPSB), located in the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences (DCCPS) at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Dr. Horowitz earned his doctorate in Cognitive Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley in 1995. Prior to joining NCI, he was Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School and Associate Director of the Visual Attention Laboratory at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He has published more than 70 peer-reviewed research papers in vision science and cognitive psychology. His research interests include attention, perception, medical image interpretation, cancer-related cognitive impairments, sleep, and circadian rhythms.
Michael Hout
National Science Foundation
Michael Hout, Ph.D., is a Program Director for Perception, Action, and Cognition in the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences directorate (in the Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences division) of the National Science Foundation. He received his undergraduate degree at the University of Pittsburgh and his masters and doctoral degrees from Arizona State University. He is a rotating Program Director on professional leave from New Mexico State University where he runs a lab in the Psychology Department and co-directs an interdisciplinary virtual and augmented reality lab as well. Prior to joining the NSF he was a conference organizer for the Object Perception, Attention, and Memory meeting and was an Associate Editor at Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics. His research focuses primarily on visual cognition (including visual search, attention, and eye movements), spanning both basic theoretical research and applied scenarios such as professional medical/security screening, and search and rescue.
Cheri Wiggs
National Eye Institute (NIH)
Cheri Wiggs, Ph.D., serves as a Program Director at the National Eye Institute (of the National Institutes of Health). She oversees extramural funding through three programs — Perception & Psychophysics, Myopia & Refractive Errors, and Low Vision & Blindness Rehabilitation. She received her PhD from Georgetown University in 1991 and came to the NIH as a researcher in the Laboratory of Brain and Cognition. She made her jump to the administrative side of science in 1998 as a Scientific Review Officer. She currently represents the NEI on several trans-NIH coordinating committees (including BRAIN, Behavioral and Social Sciences Research, Medical Rehabilitation Research) and was appointed to the NEI Director’s Audacious Goals Initiative Working Group.
Geoffrey Boynton
University of Washington
Geoffrey Boyton is a VSS Board Member and studies visual attention, reading and prosthetic vision. After studying mathematics at U.C. San Diego and U.C. Santa Barbara, Dr. Boynton received a PhD in Psychology and Cognitive Sciences at U.C. Santa Barbara in 1994. After a decade at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, CA, he joined the faculty at the University of Washington. In 2019 led an effort to develop a research MRI facility at the new Center for Human Neuroscience in the Department of Psychology which he now directs. He also teaches courses on visual perception and statistics.
Sunday, May 15, 2022, 12:45 – 2:15 pm EDT, Jasmine/Palm
Organizers: Sabrina Hansmann-Roth, University of Lille; Björn Jörges, York University Moderator: Sabrina Hansmann-Roth, University of Lille Speakers: William Ngiam, University of Chicago; Janna Wennberg, UC San Diego
Preregistration has been proposed as a tool to accelerate scientific advancement by making scientific results more robust, more reproducible, and more replicable. In this workshop, we will briefly go over the advantages of preregistered studies and the registered report publication format, and then delve deeper into the practicalities of preregistering studies as applied to the Vision Sciences. A range of topics will be discussed, such as proper specification and formalization of hypotheses, predictions, and data analysis pipelines as well as power analyses. There will also be an introduction to how registered reports go beyond preregistration and can help combat publication bias in the literature.
William Ngiam
University of Chicago
William Ngiam is a postdoctoral researcher in the Awh and Vogel Lab at the University of Chicago, studying how learning and experience influence the representation of visual information in memory, and leveraging that to understand the capacity limits of visual working memory. He is an active advocate for reform to improve science – he serves on the steering committee of ReproducibiliTea, a grassroots initiative to form Open Science communities at academic institutions, and is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal for Reproducibility in Neuroscience, a non-profit diamond open access journal. You can follow him on Twitter @will_ngiam.
Janna Wennberg
UC San Diego
Janna Wennberg is a third-year Ph.D student in psychology at UC San Diego. With Dr. John Serences, she uses behavior, fMRI, and computational modeling to investigate how flexible neural codes support visual attention and working memory. She became interested in open science as an undergraduate through her work with Dr. Julia Strand, a speech perception researcher and leader in the open science movement. She realized that open science practices such as preregistration and registered reports have served as valuable training opportunities for her, and she is interested in exploring how scientific reforms can be tools both for improving research and training early career researchers.
Sabrina Hansmann-Roth
University of Lille
Sabrina Hansmann-Roth is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Lille and the Icelandic Vision Lab. Before that, she obtained her Ph.D. from the Université Paris Descartes. 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. Beyond that, and as a member of the SPC, she is passionate about discussing Open Science particular for Early Career Researchers. Contact Sabrina at or on Twitter: @SHansmann_Roth
Organizers: Takuma Morimoto, University of Oxford; Doug Addleman, Dartmouth College Moderator: Doug Addleman, Dartmouth College Speakers: Blaire Dube, The Ohio State University; Masataka Sawayama, Inria Bordeaux Sud Ouest; Yueh-Hsun (Walter) Wu, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Promoting diversity and inclusion is a key consideration in building a strong scientific community. This year’s event will focus on accessibility in the vision science community for three groups: (i) researchers with sensory loss and other disabilities, (ii) first-generation students, and (iii) non-native English speakers. We will discuss barriers that underrepresented researchers might experience and seek potential solutions to mitigate or eliminate those barriers. Introductory presentations from panelists will be followed by small group discussion in breakout rooms. There will be a concluding roundtable discussion with the panelists about the problems and insights brought up in these smaller groups. Through this event, we seek to raise awareness of these issues and help VSS as a society and individual members to improve accessibility in their scientific communities. This event addresses the concerns of early career researchers but should be of interest to researchers at all career stages.
Blaire Dube
The Ohio State University
Blaire Dube, is a 3rd year Postdoctoral Fellow in Julie Golomb’s lab at The Ohio State University. She studies interactions between visual attention and visual working memory during goal-driven behavior using behavioral, eye-tracking, computational modeling, and fMRI methods. She is also a previous OPAM organizer and is passionate about supporting early-career researchers and increasing accessibility in her scientific communities. Blaire is a first-generation academic with perspectives on hidden curriculum and barriers inherent in academia.
Masataka Sawayama
Inria Bordeaux Sud Ouest
Masataka Sawayama, is a postdoctoral researcher at INRIA, France. During his career, he has mainly focused on understanding functional mechanisms underlying the perception of object attributes such as material, color, texture, or shape. He has recently engaged in integrating vision science and machine learning methodologies to contribute to scientific advances in both research areas. He grew up in Japan and received his Ph.D. from Chiba University in Japan. He moved to INRIA to pursue his postdoctoral research. Contact Masataka at
Yueh-Hsun (Walter) Wu
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Yueh-Hsun (Walter) Wu is currently a Psychology Ph.D. candidate with a Translational Sensory Science minor at the University of Minnesota. Walter is also one of the founding members of the International Network of Researchers with Vision Impairment and their Allies (INOVA). Walter’s research focuses on different topics related to the impact of impaired vision on daily activities, and the usage of assistive technologies in people with low vision.
Doug Addleman
Dartmouth College
Doug Addleman is a postdoctoral researcher at Dartmouth College, before which he earned his Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of Minnesota. He studies selective attention, focusing on experience-driven attention, attention in multiple modalities, and the effects of vision loss on spatial attention. As a member of the VSS Student-Postdoc Advisory Committee, Doug is committed to advocating for the diverse interests and identities of vision scientists in training.
Organizers: Geoffrey Boynton, University of Washington and Ruth Rosenholtz, MIT Moderator: Ruth Rosenholtz, MIT Speakers: Andrew Watson, Apple; James Hillis, Oculus; Eric Seemiller, Wright Patterson Air Force; Peter April, VPixx Technologies; Oliver Flynn, FDA
So you have a PhD in vision science – now what? What opportunities are available outside of academia? What are the advantages and disadvantages of academic vs. other careers? How do I get a job in industry/government/a startup? How do expectations differ? These questions and more will be addressed in a one-hour session. Panelists will make short presentations, followed by Q&A and an interactive discussion with the audience and panel.
Peter April
CEO, VPixx Technologies
Peter April is CEO of VPixx Technologies. Originally inspired by Isaac Asimov’s portrayal of sentient robots, Mr. April is driven to help neuroscientists better understand the nature of consciousness. VPixx has assembled a unique team of talented scientists and engineers, and together we create the specialized stimulation and data acquisition instruments required by the world’s leading neuroscience researchers.
Oliver Flynn
Vision scientist and regulatory scientist in the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
Oliver Flynn, Ph.D. (he/him) is a vision scientist and medical device reviewer in the Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). He earned a Ph.D. from American University in Washington, DC, in 2016, where his research focused on human visual perception of motion and contrast. From 2016 to 2020, he conducted postdoctoral research in the clinic at the National Eye Institute, National Institutes of Health, in Bethesda, Maryland. This research centered on rod-mediated visual function changes in elderly patients with genetic and age-related eye diseases such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD), Stargardt disease, and retinitis pigmentosa (RP), and their relationship to the structural changes detected by clinicians. At FDA, Dr. Flynn applies his knowledge and experience in visual function testing and clinical trials to regulate ophthalmic devices before and after they enter the U.S. market. He works with multi-disciplinary teams of experts, including engineers, chemists, and clinicians, to ensure that devices are safe and effective for U.S. consumers. These devices include intraocular lens implants, pediatric in-home treatments, and screening tools. He lives in Washington, DC.
James Hillis
Research Scientists, Oculus
Dr. Hillis completed a Ph.D in Vision Science with Dr. Martin Banks at UC Berkeley on cue-integration and 3D shape perception. He worked in academia for the next 10 years: first as a post-post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and then as an assistant Professor at the University of Glasgow. He then moved to industry, first as a color scientist at 3M and then as a research scientist at Meta (previously Oculus research). The latter position has involved developing perceptual quality metrics for AR/VR and research using models of perception and cognition to advance approaches to human-computer interaction. Overall, his research has spanned questions on color and space perception, visual search, spatial sound perception, multi-sensory integration, social interaction and models of higher level cognition for controlling human-computer interaction.
Eric Seemiller
Senior Vision Scientist, Wright Patterson Air Force
Eric Seemiller completed his PhD in vision science at Indiana University. Following postdoctoral studies at Smith-Kettlewell, the University of Texas-Austin, and back at Indiana University, he took a position as the Senior Vision Scientist at the United States Air Force Operational Based Vision Assessment Laboratory (OBVA) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Though the visual environment of airmen has changed dramatically since the early days of the Air Force, many of the vision screening tests have not been updated at all. The overarching goal of the OBVA is to design and implement more relevant, reliable, and usable aeromedical vision screening tests and tools for incoming airmen. This involves both classic visual psychophysics, vision modeling, and the design of visually faithful flight and flying task simulation. OBVA partners with a number of industry and academic labs, along with colleagues in the other service branches. They also operate several state-of-the-art simulators to get at the heart of what aspects of the visual system are most relevant for operational success.
Andrew Watson
Chief Vision Scientist, Apple,Panel Process & Optics
Andrew Watson is the Chief Vision Scientist at Apple in Cupertino, California. He leads the application of vision science to a broad range of Apple technologies, applications, devices and displays.
Dr. Watson was an undergraduate at Columbia University and received a PhD in Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. He subsequently held postdoctoral positions at the University of Cambridge in England and at Stanford University in California. From 1982 to 2016 he was the Senior Scientist for Vision Research at NASA Ames Research Center in California.
His research focuses on computational models of early vision, including spatial, temporal and motion processing, and application of vision science to imaging technology. He is the author of over 100 scientific papers, and he has seven patents, in areas such as acuity measurement, image compression, video quality, and measurement of display artifacts. He has 20,761 citations and an h-index of 63.
In 2001, Watson founded the Journal of Vision, where he served as Editor-in-Chief for 2001-2013 and 2018-2022.
Dr. Watson is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America, a Gold Fellow of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, and a Fellow of the Society for Information Display. He recently served on the Board of Directors of the Vision Sciences Society. He currently serves as the Vice Chair for Vision Science and Human Factors of the International Committee on Display Measurement. In 1990, he received the H. Julian Allen Award from NASA. He is the 2007 recipient of the Otto Schade Award from the Society for Information Display, and the 2008 winner of the Special Recognition Award from the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology. In 2016 he received the Holst Award from Philips Research and The Technical University of Eindhoven. In 2011, he received the Presidential Rank Award from the President of the United States.
Ruth Rosenholtz
Principal Research Scientist,MIT
Ruth Rosenholtz has explored a number of non-traditional career paths in vision science. Currently a Principal Research Scientist (read: soft money research faculty) in the Department of Brain & Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she did a postdoc at NASA Ames and worked at Xerox PARC for a number of years as a researcher, then as a manager of a group charged with transitioning image processing-based research into products. She studies a wide range of visual phenomena, as well as applied vision, using a mix of behavioral methods and computational modeling. Her main research topics include attention and visual search; perceptual organization; and peripheral vision.
Moderator: Ruth Rosenholtz Discussants: Joeanna Arthur, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency; Todd Horowitz, National Cancer Institute; Michael Hout, National Science Foundation; and Cheri Wiggs, National Eye Institute You have a great research idea, but you need money to make it happen. You need to write a grant. This workshop will address various funding mechanisms for vision research. Our panelists will discuss their organization’s interests and priorities, and give insight into the inner workings of their extramural research programs. There will be time for your questions.
Joeanna Arthur
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
Joeanna Arthur, Ph.D., is a Supervisory Research & Development Scientist and Senior Staff Scientist in the Predictive Analytics Research Group at the National-Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) where she leads a transdisciplinary team of scientists advancing Geospatial Science and enhancing analytic tradecraft. She also serves as the agency’s Human Research Protection Official. Prior government assignments include Chief of Research(FBI/HIG), Lead Behavioral Scientist/Psychologist (DIA), Program Manager and Operational Test & Evaluation Lead (NGA). Her past and current research areas span the fields of cognitive neuroscience, operational psychology, human-system integration, human performance optimization, intelligence interviewing, research ethics, and applied social science. She received her doctorate degree in Psychology/Cognitive Neuroscience from the George Washington University (Washington, DC) and completed a post-doctoral research fellowship in the Department of Otolaryngology- Head and Neck Surgery at the John Hopkins University School of Medicine (Baltimore, MD). Dr. Arthur is one of the Intelligence Community’s first recipients of the Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering (PECASE 2012, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy).
Todd Horowitz
National Cancer Institute
Todd Horowitz, Ph.D., is a Program Director in the Behavioral Research Program’s (BRP) Basic Biobehavioral and Psychological Sciences Branch (BBPSB), located in the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences (DCCPS) at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Dr. Horowitz earned his doctorate in Cognitive Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley in 1995. Prior to joining NCI, he was Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School and Associate Director of the Visual Attention Laboratory at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He has published more than 70 peer-reviewed research papers in vision science and cognitive psychology. His research interests include attention, perception, medical image interpretation, cancer-related cognitive impairments, sleep, and circadian rhythms.
Michael Hout
National Science Foundation
Michael Hout, Ph.D., is a Program Director for Perception, Action, and Cognition in the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences directorate (in the Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences division) of the National Science Foundation. He received his undergraduate degree at the University of Pittsburgh and his masters and doctoral degrees from Arizona State University. He is a rotating Program Director on professional leave from New Mexico State University where he runs a lab in the Psychology Department and co-directs an interdisciplinary virtual and augmented reality lab as well. Prior to joining the NSF he was a conference organizer for the Object Perception, Attention, and Memory meeting and was an Associate Editor at Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics. His research focuses primarily on visual cognition (including visual search, attention, and eye movements), spanning both basic theoretical research and applied scenarios such as professional medical/security screening, and search and rescue.
Cheri Wiggs
National Eye Institute
Cheri Wiggs, Ph.D., serves as a Program Director at the National Eye Institute (of the National Institutes of Health). She oversees extramural funding through three programs — Perception & Psychophysics, Myopia & Refractive Errors, and Low Vision & Blindness Rehabilitation. She received her PhD from Georgetown University in 1991 and came to the NIH as a researcher in the Laboratory of Brain and Cognition. She made her jump to the administrative side of science in 1998 as a Scientific Review Officer. She currently represents the NEI on several trans-NIH coordinating committees (including BRAIN, Behavioral and Social Sciences Research, Medical Rehabilitation Research) and was appointed to the NEI Director’s Audacious Goals Initiative Working Group.
Ruth Rosenholtz
MIT
Ruth Rosenholtz is a Principal Research Scientist in the Department of Brain & Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She studies a wide range of visual phenomena, as well as applied vision, using a mix of behavioral methods and computational modeling. Her main research topics include attention and visual search; perceptual organization; and peripheral vision. She is a fellow of the APS, an associate editor for the Journal Vision, and a VSS board member. Her funding sources have included NSF, NIH, Toyota, and Ford.
Peer Review of NIH NRSA Fellowship Proposals
Tuesday, May 25, 5:00 – 5:30 pm EDT
Speaker: Cibu Thomas
The objective of this session is to provide the principal investigators and their sponsors an overview about the process by which peer review of predoctoral and postdoctoral NRSA proposals is implemented by the NIH Center for Scientific Review.
Cibu Thomas
National Institutes of Health
Dr. Cibu Thomas earned his M.S. in Applied Cognition and Neuroscience from the University of Texas at Dallas, and his Ph.D. in Psychology from Carnegie Mellon University. After postdoctoral training at the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, he served as a Research Fellow at the Center for Neuroscience and Regenerative Medicine. He then served as a Staff Scientist for the Section on Learning and Plasticity in the Laboratory of Brain and Cognition at the National Institute of Mental Health, where his research focused on elucidating the principles governing brain plasticity and its relation to behavior using multimodal MRI and psychophysics. He is currently the scientific review officer for the NIH NRSA Fellowships study section F02B, which manages the scientific review of applications proposing training that is focused on understanding normal sensory (both auditory and visual), motor or sensorimotor function as well as disorders of cognitive, sensory, perceptual and motor development.
Organizers: Kevin Lande, York University; Chaz Firestone, Johns Hopkins University Speakers: Ned Block, Silver Professor of Philosophy, Psychology and Neural Science, NYU; Jessie Munton, Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Cambridge; E.J. Green, Assistant Professor and Class of 1948 Career Development Chair in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, MIT; and a slate of invited vision scientists who will facilitate the discussion.
The past decade has seen a resurgence of interest in the intersection between vision science and the philosophy of perception. But opportunities for conversation between vision scientists and philosophers are still hard to come by. The phiVIS workshop is a forum for promoting and expanding this interdisciplinary dialogue. Philosophers of perception can capitalize on the experimental knowledge of working vision scientists, while vision scientists can take advantage of the opportunity to connect their research to long-standing philosophical questions. Short talks by philosophers of perception that engage with the latest research in vision science will be followed by discussion with a slate of vision scientists, on topics such as probabilistic representation in perception, perceptual constancy, amodal completion, multisensory perception, visual adaptation, and much else. This event is supported by York University’s Vision: Science to Applications (VISTA) program and Centre for Vision Research, as well as the Johns Hopkins University Vision Sciences Group.
To register and to learn more about our speakers and our mission, visit: www.phivis.org.
No registration required. First come, first served, until full.
Saturday, May 18, 2019, 12:45 – 1:45 pm, Sabal/Sawgrass
Moderator: David Brainard, University of Pennsylvania
Discussants: Todd Horowitz, National Cancer Institute; Lawrence R. Gottlob, National Science Foundation; and Cheri Wiggs, National Eye Institute
You have a great research idea, but you need money to make it happen. You need to write a grant. This workshop will address NIH and NSF funding mechanisms for vision research. Cheri Wiggs (National Eye Institute) and Todd Horowitz (National Cancer Institute) will provide insight into the inner workings of the NIH extramural research program. Larry Gottlob will represent the Social, Behavioral, and Economic (SBE) directorate of the NSF. There will be time for your questions.
Todd Horowitz
National Cancer Institute
Todd S. Horowitz, Ph.D., is a Program Director in the Behavioral Research Program’s (BRP) Basic Biobehavioral and Psychological Sciences Branch (BBPSB), located in the Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences (DCCPS) at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Dr. Horowitz earned his doctorate in Cognitive Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley in 1995. Prior to joining NCI, he was Assistant Professor of Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School and Associate Director of the Visual Attention Laboratory at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He has published more than 70 peer-reviewed research papers in vision science and cognitive psychology. His research interests include attention, perception, medical image interpretation, cancer-related cognitive impairments, sleep, and circadian rhythms.
Lawrence R. Gottlob
National Science Foundation
Larry Gottlob, Ph.D., is a Program Director in the Perception, Action, and Cognition program at the National Science Foundation. His permanent home is in the Psychology Department at the University of Kentucky, but he is on his second rotation at NSF. Larry received his PhD from Arizona State University in 1995 and has worked in visual attention, memory, and cognitive aging.
Cheri Wiggs
National Eye Institute
Cheri Wiggs, Ph.D., serves as a Program Director at the National Eye Institute (of the National Institutes of Health). She oversees extramural funding through three programs — Perception & Psychophysics, Myopia & Refractive Errors, and Low Vision & Blindness Rehabilitation. She received her PhD from Georgetown University in 1991 and came to the NIH as a researcher in the Laboratory of Brain and Cognition. She made her jump to the administrative side of science in 1998 as a Scientific Review Officer. She currently represents the NEI on several trans-NIH coordinating committees (including BRAIN, Behavioral and Social Sciences Research, Medical Rehabilitation Research) and was appointed to the NEI Director’s Audacious Goals Initiative Working Group.
David Brainard
University of Pennsylvania
David H. Brainard is the RRL Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests focus on human color vision, which he studies both experimentally and through computational modeling of visual processing. He is a fellow of the Optical Society, ARVO and the Association for Psychological Science. At present, he directs Penn’s Vision Research Center, serves as Associate Dean for the Natural Sciences in Penn’s School of Arts and Sciences, is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Vision, co-editor of the Annual Review of Vision Science, and president-elect of the Vision Sciences Society.
VSS Workshop on Funding Outside the US
No registration required. First come, first served, until full.
Sunday, May 19, 2019, 12:45 – 1:45 pm, Sabal/Sawgrass
Moderator: Laurie Wilcox, York University, Toronto
Panelists: Thiago Leiros Costa, KU Leuven; Anya Hurlbert, Newcastle University; Concetta Morrone, University of Pisa; and Cong Yu, Peking University
You have a great research idea, but you need money to make it happen. You need to write a grant. This funding workshop will be focused specifically on disseminating information about non-US funding mechanisms appropriate for vision research. The format of the workshop will be a moderated panel discussion driven by audience questions. The panelists are vision scientists, each of whom has experience with at least one non-US funding mechanism. Because funding opportunities are diverse and differ across countries, however, the workshop will also encourage information sharing from the audience.
Thiago Leiros Costa
KU Leuven
Thiago Leiros Costa is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow at KU Leuven, Belgium. He is currently focused on accessing neural correlates of Gestalt-like phenomena and on the role that predictive processing plays in low and mid-level vision. Being a neuropsychologist and visual neuroscientist, he is interested in basic research in the field of perception per se, but also on opportunities for translational research in psychology (using tasks and methods derived from basic research to address clinically relevant questions). This has led him to work with different clinical populations, currently focusing on visual predictive processing in Autism. He has experience with multiple techniques, such as psychophysics, EEG, non-invasive brain stimulation and is currently planning his first study using fMRI.
Anya Hurlbert
Newcastle University
Anya Hurlbert is Professor of Visual Neuroscience, Director of the Centre for Translational Systems Neuroscience and Dean of Advancement at Newcastle University. She co-founded Newcastle’s Institute of Neuroscience in 2003, serving as its co-Director until 2014. Hurlbert’s research focuses on colour perception and its role in everyday visual and cognitive tasks, in normal and atypical development and ageing. She is also interested in applied areas such as digital imaging and novel lighting technologies. Professor Hurlbert is active in the public understanding of science, and has devised and co-curated several science-based art exhibitions, including an interactive installation at the National Gallery, London, for its 2014 summer exhibition Making Colour. She is former Chairman of the Colour Group (GB) and Scientist Trustee of the National Gallery, and currently on the editorial board of Current Biology as well as several international advisory boards. Funding for her personal research has come from the Wellcome Trust, UKRI (EPSRC/MRC), the European Commission (EU), charities, and industry. She is currently a PI in the EU H2020 Innovative Training Network “Dynamics in Vision and Touch”.
Concetta Morrone
University of Pisa
Maria Concetta Morrone is Professor of Physiology in the School of Medicine of the University of Pisa, Director of the Vision Laboratory of the IRCCS Fondazione Stella Maris, and Academic Director of the inter-University Masters in Neuroscience. She is a member of the prestigious Accademia dei Lincei and has been awarded major national and international prizes for scientific achievements. From an initial interest in biophysics and physiology, where she made many seminal contributions, she moved on to psychophysics and visual perception. Over the years her research has spanned spatial vision, development, plasticity, attention, color, motion, robotics, vision during eye movements and more recently multisensory perception and action. She has coordinated many European Community grants over many founding schemes, and was awarded in 2014 an ERC-IDEA Advanced Grant for Excellence in Science.
Cong Yu
Peking University
Cong Yu is a professor at Peking University. He studies human perceptual learning using psychophysical methods, and macaque visual cortex using two-photon calcium imaging.
Laurie Wilcox
York University
Laurie M. Wilcox is a Professor in Psychology at York University, Toronto, Canada. She uses psychophysical methods to study stereoscopic depth perception. In addition to basic research in 3D vision, Laurie has been involved in understanding the factors that influence the viewer experience of 3D media (IMAX, Christie Digital) and perceptual distortions in VR (Qualcomm Canada). Her research has been funded primarily by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada which supports both basic and applied research programs. She is also familiar with contract-based research in collaboration with industry and government agencies.
There is no advanced sign-up for workshops. Workshops will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis.
Peer-networking for Students and Postdocs
Saturday, May 18, 2019, 12:45 – 1:45 pm, Jasmine/Palm
Moderators: Eileen Kowler, Talia Konkle, and Fulvio Domini
Peer-to-peer connections and networks can be the basis of your most important long-term collaborations and friendships. This workshop will help you meet and connect to your peer researchers, face to face. The format will be separate round tables dedicated to different topics, allowing opportunities for discussion and networking. Session moderators will help keep things organized. We’ll have at least one rotation during the workshop so that you will have the opportunity to talk to more people and explore more topics, including topics you’re working on now, as well as areas of interest for the future.
Eileen Kowler
Rutgers University
Eileen Kowler is a Distinguished Professor at Rutgers University and Senior Associate Dean in the School of Graduate Studies. She received her doctoral degree from the University of Maryland, and was a postdoc at NYU. She has been at Rutgers since 1980, where she maintains affiliations with the Department of Psychology and Center for Cognitive Science. Kowler’s research focuses on the planning of and generation of eye movements and their role in visual tasks. In her roles as a faculty member, VSS board member, and former principal investigator of an NSF training grant, she has a strong commitment to the topic of this workshop: creating opportunities for students and postdocs to develop their careers and collaborate with one another.
Talia Konkle
Harvard University
Talia Konkle is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. Her research characterizes mid and high-level visual representation at both cognitive and neural levels. She received her B.A. in Applied Math and Cognitive Science at UC Berkeley in 2004, her Ph.D. from MIT in Brain and Cognitive Science in 2011, and conducted her postdoctoral training at University of Trento and Harvard until 2015. Talia is the recipient of the 2019 Elsevier/VSS Young Investigator Award.
Fulvio Domini
Brown University
Fulvio Domini is a Professor at the department of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences at Brown University. He was hired at Brown University in 1999 after completing a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology at the University of Trieste, Italy in 1997. His research team investigates how the human visual system processes 3D visual information to allow successful interactions with the environment. His approach is to combine computational methods and behavioral studies to understand what are the visual features that establish the mapping between vision and action. His research has been and is currently funded by the National Science Foundation.
VSS Workshop for PhD Students and Postdocs:
How to Spend Your Time Well as a Young Researcher
Sunday, May 19, 2019, 12:45 – 1:45 pm, Jasmine/Palm
Moderator: Johan Wagemans, University of Leuven, Belgium
Panelists: Alex Holcombe, Niko Kriegeskorte, Allison Sekuler, and Kate Storrs
Graduate students and postdocs often wonder what they should spend their work time on, in addition to learning the skills of a good researcher, doing good research, and writing good papers. For instance, quite a few people write blogs or are very active on public forums (e.g., about open science, open source software, helpdesks for R, Python, etc.). Others have questions about how much time to spend on service to the profession, such as reviewing manuscripts. With all these choices, many developing researchers will be faced with the challenge of finding the right balance between diversifying their professional activities while still devoting time to the core requirements of their careers. This workshop will feature panelists who will provide perspectives on these issues and lead a discussion on the pros and cons of spending time on professional activities not directly relating to research. If you think you have no time for this, you should definitely be there!
Alex Holcombe
University of Sydney
When not teaching or working on vision experiments, Alex Holcombe works to improve transparency in and access to research. To address the emerging reproducibility crisis in psychology, in 2011 he co-created PsychFiledrawer.org, in 2013 introduced the Registered Replication Report at the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science, and appears in this cartoon about replication. He was involved in the creation of the journal badges to signal open practices, the preprint server PsyArxiv, the new journal Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, and PsyOA.org, which provides resources for flipping a subscription journal to open access. Talk to him anytime on Twitter @ceptional.
Niko Kriegeskorte
Columbia University
Nikolaus Kriegeskorte is a computational neuroscientist who studies how our brains enable us to see and understand the world around us. He received his PhD in Cognitive Neuroscience from Maastricht University, held postdoctoral positions at the Center for Magnetic Resonance Research at the University of Minnesota and the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, and was a Programme Leader at the U.K. Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at the University of Cambridge. Kriegeskorte is a Professor at Columbia University, affiliated with the Departments of Psychology and Neuroscience. He is a Principal Investigator and Director of Cognitive Imaging at the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University. Kriegeskorte is a co-founder of the conference “Cognitive Computational Neuroscience”, which had its inaugural meeting in September 2017 at Columbia University.
Allison Sekuler
McMaster University
Allison Sekuler is the Sandra Rotman Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience and Vice-President Research at Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care. She also is Managing Director of the Centre for Aging + Brain Health Innovation, and the world-renowned Rotman Research Institute. A graduate of Pomona College (BA, Mathematics and Psychology) and the University of California, Berkeley (PhD, Psychology), she holds faculty appointments at the University of Toronto and McMaster University, where she was the country’s first Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience and established lasting collaborations with Japanese researchers. Dr. Sekuler has a notable record of scientific achievements in aging, vision science, neural plasticity, imaging, and neurotechnology. Her research focuses on perceptual organization and face perception, motion and depth perception, spatial and pattern vision, and age-related changes in vision. The recipient of numerous awards for research, teaching and leadership, she has broad experience in senior academic, research, and innovation leadership roles, advancing internationalization, interdisciplinarity, skills-development, entrepreneurship, and inclusivity.
Kate Storrs
Justus-Liebig University, Giessen
Kate Storrs is currently a Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow using deep learning to study material perception at the Justus-Liebig University in Giessen, Germany. Before that she was a postdoc at the University of Cambridge, a Teaching Fellow at University College London, and a PhD student at the University of Queensland in Australia. Her main professional hobby is science communication. Kate has performed vision-science-themed stand-up comedy in London at the Royal Society, the Natural History Museum, the Bloomsbury Theatre, and a dozen pubs and festivals across the UK. She has presented vision science segments on Cambridge TV, the Naked Scientists podcast, BBC Cambridgeshire radio, and was a UK finalist in the 2016 FameLab international science communication competition. Always happy to talk on Twitter @katestorrs.
Johan Wagemans
University of Leuven, Belgium
Johan Wagemans is a professor in experimental psychology at the University of Leuven (KU Leuven) in Belgium. Current research interests are mainly in perceptual grouping, figure-ground organization, depth perception, shape perception, object perception, and scene perception, including applications in autism, arts, and sports (see www.gestaltrevision.be). He has published more than 300 peer-reviewed articles on these topics and he has edited the Oxford Handbook of Perceptual Organization (2015).In addition to supervising many PhD students and postdocs, he is doing a great deal of community service such as coordinating the Department of Brain & Cognition, being editor of Cognition, Perception, i-Perception, and Art & Perception, and organizing the European Conference of Visual Perception (ECVP) and the Visual Science of Art Conference (VSAC) in Leuven (August 2019).
Cibu Thomas
Todd Horowitz
Lawrence R. Gottlob
Cheri Wiggs
David Brainard
Thiago Leiros Costa
Anya Hurlbert
Concetta Morrone
Cong Yu
Laurie Wilcox
Eileen Kowler
Talia Konkle
Fulvio Domini
Niko Kriegeskorte
Allison Sekuler
Kate Storrs
Johan Wagemans