Melissa Le-Hoa Võ, Professor of Cognitive Psychology and Head of the DFG-funded Emmy Noether Group, Scene Grammar Lab, Goethe Universität Frankfurt, is the winner of the 2018 Elsevier/VSS Young Investigator Award.

Dr. Võ received her PhD from the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich in 2009. She then moved on to perform postdoctoral work, first with John Henderson at the University of Edinburgh, and then with Jeremy Wolfe at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Võ’s work has been supported by numerous grants and fellowships, including grants from the NIH and the German Research Council. In 2014, Melissa Võ moved back to Germany where as freshly appointed Full Professor for Cognitive Psychology she set up the Scene Grammar Lab at the Goethe University Frankfurt.

Dr. Võ is a superb scientist who has already had an extraordinary impact on our field. Her distinctive contribution has been to develop the concept of “scene grammar,” particularly scrutinizing the distinction between semantics and syntax in visual scenes. The distinction can be illustrated by considering scene components that are semantically incongruent (e.g. a printer in a kitchen) versus those that are syntactically incongruent (e.g. a cooking pot in a kitchen, floating in space rather than resting on a counter). Dr. Võ has used eye-tracking and EEG techniques in both children and adults to demonstrate that the brain processes semantic and syntactic visual information differentially, and has shown that scene grammar not only aids visual processing but also plays a key role in efficiently guiding search in real-world scenarios. Her work has implications in many areas, ranging from computer science to psychiatry. In addition to being a tremendously innovative and productive researcher, Dr. Võ is an active mentor of younger scientists and an award-winning teacher. Her outstanding contributions make her a highly worthy recipient of the 12th VSS Young Investigator Award.

Dr. Võ will speak at the VSS Awards Session on Monday, May 21 at 12:30 pm in Talk Room 1-2. To learn more about Melissa Võ’s talk, please visit the VSS website.

This year, VSS is exicited to offer two workshops for students and postdocs, as well as a special mixer for undergraduates.

VSS 2018 Student and Postdoc Workshops

The workshops are available on a first-come, first-served basis. There is no advanced registration.

Getting that Faculty Job

Saturday, May 19, 1:00 – 2:00 pm

Moderator:
David Brainard, University of Pennsylvania

Panelists:
Michelle Greene, Bates College
Tim Brady, UCSD
Nicole Rust, University of Pennsylvania
James Elder, York University

A key transition on the academic career path is obtaining a faculty position. This workshop will focus on the application process (optimizing CV, statements, letters), the interview and job talk, handling the two-body problem, and post-offer steps such as negotiation about start-up funds, space, and teaching responsibilities. Panelists include junior scientists who have recently obtained a faculty position as well as more senior scientists who can offer perspective from the hiring side of the process.

The Public Face of Your Science

Sunday, May 20, 2018, 1:00 – 2:00 pm

Moderator:
Jeff Schall, Vanderbilt University

Panelists:
Allison Sekuler, McMaster University
Frans Verstraten, University of Sydney
Morgan Ryan, SpringerNature

Your research has several potential audiences. In this workshop, we will focus on the general public. When should you tell the world about your latest results? Always? Only if you think it is particularly noteworthy? Only when someone else asks? How should you communicate with the public? Social media? Press releases? How can you attract attention for your work (when you want to) and what should you do if you attract attention that you do not want? Our panel consists of two vision scientists, Allison Sekuler and Frans Verstraten, who have experience in the public eye and Morgan Ryan, the editor for SpringerNature, who handles the Psychonomic Society journals (including AP&P, PBR, and CRPI). Bring your questions.

More Information about the Student and Postdoc Workshops

 

Undergraduate Vision Researchers Mixer

Everyone is welcome. No registration is needed for this special event.
Sunday, May 20, 2018, 4:15 – 5:00 pm

Hosts:
Lynne Kiorpes, NYU (VSS Board member)
Nestor Matthews, Denison University (Council for Undergraduate Research, Psychology Division)

This meet-and-greet event will enable informal interaction among our undergraduate attendees. In addition, faculty will be present to learn about the concerns and priorities for undergraduates attending VSS so that relevant programming can be planned in future years. Refreshments will be served.

Congratulations to the  VSS 2018 Student Travel Award Winners. The VSS Travel Awards, sponsored by Elsevier/Vision Research, are presented to twenty graduate students who have submitted highly-rated abstracts for the 2018 Meeting. Awards are based upon the merit of the work that the student will be presenting as determined by the VSS Abstract Review Committee, as well as letters of support from advisors and a personal statement from the candidate. Click here to view each of the winners.

 

Congratulations to George Sperling, the third recipient of the Ken Nakayama Medal for Excellence in Vision Science. The Nakayama Medal was created to honor Professor Ken Nakayama’s contributions to the Vision Sciences Society, as well as his innovations and excellence to 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.

George is a professor in the Department of Cognitive Sciences, Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, and the Institute of Mathematical Behavioral Sciences, University of California, Irvine. His research has resulted in numerous breakthroughs in vision science. Most recently, George has worked (with Charlie Chubb, Ted Wright, and Peng Sun) on developing efficient methods for measuring the perceptual attention filters that define feature attention.

For more information about George Sperling and an overview of his career, please visit the Ken Nakayama Award page on the VSS website.

George will be presented with the medal and deliver a talk at the 2018 VSS Awards Session on Monday, May 21, at 12:30 pm.

Congratulations to Nancy Kanwisher, the sixth recipient of the Davida Teller Award, established to honor women vision scientists who have made exceptional contributions to the field of vision science and also have a strong history of mentoring.

Nancy is the Walter A. Rosenblith Professor, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, McGovern Institute for Brain Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research uses fMRI and other methods to discover the functional organization of the brain as a window into the architecture of the human mind.

For more information about Nancy Kanwisher and her research, please visit the Davida Teller Award page on the VSS website.

Nancy will be presented with her award and deliver a talk at the 2018 VSS Awards Session on Monday, May 21, at 12:30 pm.

We are pleased to announce this year’s Member-Initiated Symposia, which will be held on Friday, May 18, beginning at 12:00 noon.

Clinical insights into basic visual processes
Organizers: Paul Gamlin, University of Alabama at Birmingham; Ann E. Elsner, Indiana University; Ronald Gregg, University of Louisville
Time/Room: Friday, May 18, 2018, 12:00 – 2:00 pm, Talk Room 1

Vision and Visualization: Inspiring Novel Research Directions in Vision Science
Organizers: Christie Nothelfer, Northwestern University, Madison Elliott, UBC, Zoya Bylinskii, MIT, Cindy Xiong, Northwestern University, & Danielle Albers Szafir, University of Colorado Boulder
Time/Room: May 18, 2018, 2017, 12:00 – 2:00 pm, Talk Room 2

Prediction in perception and action
Organizer: Katja Fiehler, Department of Psychology and Sports Science, Giessen University, Giessen, Germany
Time/Room: Friday, May 18, 2018, 2:30 – 4:30 pm, Talk Room 1

When seeing becomes knowing: Memory in the form perception pathway
Organizer: Caitlin Mullin, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of the Technology
Time/Room: May 18, 2018, 2:30 – 4:30 pm, Talk Room 2

Visual remapping: From behavior to neurons through computation
Organizers: James Mazer, Cell Biology & Neuroscience, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT & Fred Hamker, Chemnitz University of Technology, Chemnitz, Germany
Time/Room: Friday, May 18, 2018, 5:00 – 7:00 pm, Talk Room 1

Advances in temporal models of human visual cortex
Organizer: Jonathan Winawer, Department of Psychology and Center for Neural Science, New York University
Time/Room: Friday, May 18, 2018, 5:00 – 7:00 pm, Talk Room 2

Wednesday, May 16

Computational and Mathematical Models in Vision (MODVIS)

Wednesday, May 16 – Friday, May 18, Horizons
9:00 am – 6:00 pm, Wednesday
9:00 am – 6:00 pm, Thursday
8:30 – 11:45 am Friday

Organizers: Jeff Mulligan, NASA Ames Research Center; Zygmunt Pizlo, UC Irvine; Anne B. Sereno, Purdue University; and Qasim Zaidi, SUNY College of Optometry

Keynote Selection Committee: Yalda Mohsenzadeh, MIT; Michael Rudd, University of Washington

The 7th VSS satellite workshop on Computational and Mathematical Models in Vision (MODVIS) will be held at the Tradewinds Island Resorts in St. Pete Beach, FL, May 16 – May 18. A keynote address will be given by Eero Simoncelli, New York University.

The early registration fee is $100 for regular participants, $50 for students. More information can be found on the workshop’s website: http://www.conf.purdue.edu/modvis/

Thursday, May 17

Eye tracking in Virtual Reality

Thursday, May 17, 10:00 am – 3:00 pm, Jacaranda Hall (Jasmine/Palm)

Organizer: Gabriel Diaz, Rochester Institute of Technology

This will be hands on workshop run by Gabriel Diaz, with support from his graduate students Kamran Binaee and Rakshit Kothari.

The ability to incorporate eye tracking into computationally generated contexts presents new opportunities for research into gaze behavior. The aim of this workshop is to provide an understanding of the hardware, data collection process, and algorithms for data analysis. Example data and code will be provided in two both Jupyter notebooks and Matlab (choose your preference). This workshop is sponsored by The Optical Society’s Vision Technical Group and is suitable for both PIs and graduate students.

Friday, May 18

Tutorial on Big Data and Online Crowd-Sourcing for Vision Research

Friday, May 18, 8:30 – 11:45 am, Jacaranda Hall (Jasmine/Palm)

Organizer: Wilma Bainbridge, National Institutes of Health

Speakers: Wilma Bainbridge, Tim Brady, Dwight Kravitz, and Gijsbert Stoet

Online experiments and Big Data are becoming big topics in the field of vision science, but can be hard to access for people not familiar with web development and coding. This tutorial will teach attendees the basics of creating online crowd-sourced experiments, and how to think about collecting and analyzing Big Data related to vision research. Four experts in the field will discuss how they use and collect Big Data, and give hands-on practice to tutorial attendees. We will discuss Amazon Mechanical Turk, its strengths and weaknesses, and how to leverage it in creative ways to collect powerful, large-scale data. We will then discuss Psytoolkit, an online experimental platform for coding timed behavioral and psychophysical tasks, that can integrate with Amazon Mechanical Turk. We will then discuss how to create Big Datasets using various ways of “scraping” large-scale data from the internet. Finally, we will discuss other sources of useful crowd-sourced data, such as performance on mobile games, and methods for scaling down and analyzing these large data sets.

Sunday, May 20

FoVea (Females of Vision et al) Workshop

Sunday, May 20, 7:30 – 8:30 pm, Horizons

Organizers: Diane Beck, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Mary A. Peterson, University of Arizona; Karen Schloss, University of Wisconsin – Madison; Allison Sekuler, Baycrest Health Sciences

Speaker: Virginia Valian, Hunter College
Title: TBA

Dr. Valian is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Director of The Gender Equity Project

FoVea is a group founded to advance the visibility, impact, and success of women in vision science (www.foveavision.org). We encourage vision scientists of all genders to participate in the workshops.

Monday, May 21

Psychophysics Toolbox Discussion

Monday, May 21, 2:00 – 3:30 pm, Talk Room 1

Organizers: Vijay Iyer, MathWorks

Speakers: Vijay Iyer, others TBD

Discussion of the current-state (technical, funding, community status) of the Psychophysics toolbox, widely used for visual stimulus generation in vision science experiments.

Social Hour for Faculty at Primarily Undergraduate Institutions (PUIs)

Monday, May 21, 2:00 – 4:00 pm, Royal Tern

Organizer: Katherine Moore, Arcadia University

Do you work at a primarily undergraduate institution (PUI)? Do you juggle your research program, student mentoring, and a heavy teaching load? If so, come along to the PUI social and get to know other faculty at PUIs! It will be a great opportunity to share your ideas and concerns. Feel free to bring your own drinks / snacks. Prospective faculty of PUIs are also welcome to attend and get to know us and our institutions.

Canadian Vision Social

Monday, May 21, 2:00 – 4:00 pm, Jacaranda Hall (Jasmine/Palm)

Organizers: Doug Crawford, York Centre for Vision Research

This afternoon Social is open to any VSS member who is, knows, or would like to meet a Canadian Vision Scientist! The event will feature free snacks and beverages. We particularly encourage trainees and scientists who would like to learn about the various research and training funds available through the Vision: Science to Applications (VISTA) program, which is sponsoring this event. VISTA is funded in part by the Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF).

Tuesday, May 22

Virtual Reality as a Tool for Vision Scientists

Tuesday, May 22, 1:00 – 2:00 pm, Talk Room 1

Organizer: Matthias Pusch, WorldViz

In a hands on group session, we will show how Virtual Reality can be used by Vision Scientists for remote and on site collaborative experiments. Full experimental control over stimuli and reactions enable a unique setting for measuring performance. We will experience collaboration with off-site participants, and show the basics of performance data recording and analysis.

VSS is pleased to announce that the 16th Annual Visual Demos Evening at VSS will be Monday, May 21, 2018, from 6:00 – 10:00 pm at the TradeWinds Island Resorts, St. Pete Beach. Demo Night is a celebration of vision science featuring demonstrations of visual phenomena both old and new. Join us for a Demo Night Beach BBQ from 6:00 – 8:00 pm, followed by demos inside the Island Ballroom from 7:00 – 10:00 pm.

The Demo Night committee is seeking submissions of particularly dramatic, provocative, educational, and entertaining demonstrations of visual phenomena. There is no requirement that demos be novel and we would like to encourage submissions that highlight classic effects. We particularly encourage demonstrations that transcend the bounds of the tabletop, such as immersive experiences, and also ones that are “physical” and do not rely on computer graphics.

VSS and the TradeWinds Island Resorts can provide tables, electrical outlets, some wall space and/or screens for projections, and poster boards upon request. The organizers will help coordinate special needs (e.g., theatrical lighting) on a case-by-case basis. Each presenter will be responsible for bringing and setting up any other necessary equipment for their own demos, including data projectors and other displays.

If you have a demo that you would like to present for Demo Night, please fill out the submission form located on the VSS website no later than March 14, 2018.

This year’s Demo Night will be organized and curated by Gideon Caplovitz, University of Nevada, Reno; Arthur Shapiro, American University; Karen Schloss, University of Wisconsin; and Gennady Erlikhman, University of Nevada, Reno.

Nominations are open for two 4-year positions on the Vision Sciences Society Board of Directors. The Board’s responsibilities include scheduling the Annual Meeting, implementing and monitoring VSS policies, budget oversight, and other organizational activities. The Board meets twice a year, during the Annual Meeting and in late January.

Any regular VSS member in good standing may be nominated, with the exception of individuals now on the Board, or who have served on the Board within the last four years.

NOMINATION PROCEDURE:
Each nomination must be endorsed by three regular VSS members. One person should email the nomination to and copy the other two nominators on the email. The other two nominators should indicate their endorsement by forwarding the nominating email to . Please include a recent vita and a short paragraph describing the qualifications of the nominee, as well as an assurance that the nominee is willing to serve. Nominees will remain on the nominee list for three years, unless they indicate otherwise.

SELECTION OF SLATE OF CANDIDATES: (http://www.visionsciences.org/nominating-committee/)
The VSS bylaws provide for a Nominating Committee, composed of VSS members who are highly respected scientists chosen to represent the broad range of disciplines representative of VSS members (the VSS President chairs the Nominating Committee). The current members of the Nominating Committee are Eli Brenner, Barbara Dosher, Julie Harris, Pascal Mamassian and Mary Peterson. For each open Director position, the Nominating Committee selects from the nominees a slate of candidates who are highly respected scientists and who, when added to the Board of Directors, would result in broad representation of the disciplines representative of VSS members.

CURRENT BOARD OF DIRECTORS: (http://www.visionsciences.org/board/)
The names, term-end dates and areas of expertise of the Board members are listed below. Board terms end immediately after the VSS meeting of the year listed.

Preeti Verghese (2018)
Visual search and attention, Eye movements, Motion, Binocular vision

Andrew Watson (2018)
Spatial vision, Motion perception, Psychophysics, Computational models, Visual displays

Eli Brenner (2019)
Perception and action, Eye movements, Reaching and grasping, Color, Cue combination, Motion perception, Psychophysics

Jeremy Wolfe (2019)
Visual search, Visual attention, Scene perception, Visual memory, Medical image perception

Jeffrey Schall (2020)
Visual search and attention, Eye movements, Neurophysiology

David Brainard (2020)
Color and lightness, Material perception, Spatial vision, Psychophysics, Computational models

Lynne Kiorpes (2020)
Visual development, Amblyopia, Developmental disability, Neurophysiology

Michael Webster (2021)
Color and lightness, Spatial vision, Face perception, Adaptation and plasticity, Psychophysics

Laurie Wilcox (2021)
Binocular vision, Depth perception, Psychophysics, Spatial vision, Visual displays

Preeti Verghese and Andrew Watson will be leaving the Board after the Annual Meeting in May.

VSS is pleased to welcome Kenneth C. Catania as the VSS 2018 Keynote Speaker. Dr. Catania is the Stevenson Professor of Biological Sciences at Vanderbilt University. He is considered an expert in exotic animal behaviors, focusing on how specialized species reveal general principles about the organization of sensory systems. Dr. Catania was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2006 and a Guggenheim Fellow in 2014. In 2013, he received the Pradel Research Award in Neurosciences from the National Academy of Sciences.

In his talk entitled “More than meets the eye: the extraordinary brains and behaviors of specialized predators,” Dr. Catania will describe the neurobiology and behavior of unusual species, including star-nosed moles, tentacled snakes, and electric eels. He will discuss predator-prey interactions, in particular how these interactions have resulted in the evolution of high-acuity senses and dramatic attack and escape behaviors.

Dr. Catania’s talk will be held on Saturday, May 19th at 7:15 pm in Talk Room 1-2. To learn more about Kenneth C. Catania and his groundbreaking work, please visit his home page.