Dear VSS 2017 Registrant,

Thank you for registering to attend VSS 2017. You can pick up your badge and meeting materials at the VSS Registration desk beginning at 4:00 pm on Thursday May 18th located in the Grand Palm Colonnade of the TradeWinds Island Grand.

In an effort to ensure the best experience possible for all of our attendees, we would like to know whether you require vegan, vegetarian, or gluten-free meals. Although we always include these options at every event, your input will give us a better sense of quantities for ordering. Also, please let us know if you have medically necessary food restrictions. Please email us at at your earliest opportunity.

We look forward to seeing you in Florida!

PDFs of the VSS 2017 Program and Abstract Books are available for download.

New this Year: “Connect with Industry Reps Who Are Hiring”

VSS would like to help facilitate interactions between industry reps and VSS members seeking industry jobs in vision science. Representatives from Meta Co., Exponent, SR Research and Oculus will be on hand during the Saturday and Sunday morning coffee breaks to discuss open positions for vision scientists in their companies. The reps are happy to answer questions about working in industry as a vision scientist.
“Connect with Industry Reps Who are Hiring” will take place in Banyan/Citrus (Jacaranda Hall) on both Saturday, May 20 and Sunday, May 21 from 9:45 – 10:30 am. There is no need to register in advance.

Coffee and refreshments will be available

 

2017 VSS PhD Student and Postdoc Workshops

VSS is pleased to offer the following PhD Student and Postdoc Workshops this year:

Reviewing and Responding to Review
Sunday, May 21, 2017, 1:00 – 2:00 pm, Sabal/Sawgrass (Jacaranda Hall)
Moderator: Jeremy Wolfe
Panelists: David H. Foster, Isabel Gauthier, Cathleen Moore, Jeremy Wolfe

Careers in Industry and Government
Sunday, May 21, 2017, 1:00 – 2:00 pm, Jasmine/Palm (Jacaranda Hall)
Moderator: David Brainard
Panelists: Kurt Debono, Kevin MacKenzie, Alex Smolyanskaya, Cheri Wiggs, David Brainard

To learn more about each workshop, please see Student Workshops.

 

Second Annual “Meet the Professors”

Students and postdocs are invited to the second annual “Meet the Professors” event, Monday afternoon from 4:45 to 6:00 pm, immediately preceding the VSS Dinner and Demo Night. This is an opportunity for a free-wheeling, open-ended discussion with members of the VSS Board and other professors. You might chat about science, the annual meeting, building a career, or whatever comes up.
Participants must pre-register by clicking the button below. This year, the event will consist of two 30-minute sessions separated by a 15-minute snack break. Please select a different professor for each session. Space is limited and is assigned on a first-come, first-served basis.
For more information about the event, please go to Meet the Professors.

Register for “Meet the Professors”

Access All Program Information from Your Mobile Device

The VSS 2017 program is available in two electronic formats.

SmartPhone App
Compatibility: iPhone 5 or greater, running the latest iOS
No internet required after installation
The SmartPhone app, once downloaded, requires no internet connection. The app offers a program schedule, attendee directory, presenter directory and the ability to bookmark sessions and presentations, take notes and flag your favorites.
Installation Instructions:
1. Download and install the MA eEvent app from the Apple App Store: Download the App
2. Activate the app using one of the two following options:
Option 1: Enter “vss2017” as the username and password.
Option 2: Use the “scan event QR code option” and the QR code below.
NOTE: If you already have the app installed from the 2016 meeting, you will need to “Reset Meeting ID” first, before activating for 2017. The “Reset Meeting ID” option can be found inside the MA eEvent app, on the left menu.

Mobile Web App
Compatibility: All devices
Requires Internet
The mobile web app is compatible with all devices and allows you to view/search the full meeting program. In addition, you may access additional features such as an attendee directory, speaker directory and additional meeting information.
Access the Mobile Web App at: http://visionsciences1.org/vss_public/mobile/index.php
Log in with your VSS user name and password.

Pre-Registration Closes in Two Days!
After this Wednesday, the increased onsite registration rates will apply.

Register Now and Save!

Congratulations to the 2017 ARVO/VSS Research Fellowship Recipient:
Kathryn Bonnen, University of Texas at Austin

Kathryn Bonnen will apply her training in the perception of 3-dimensional motion and sensorimotor control to investigate how individuals with amblyopia use vision to guide action in everyday tasks.

The purpose of the ARVO/VSS Research Fellowship is to encourage and foster new collaborations between clinical and basic vision researchers to better train young scientists in the area of translational research. These fellowships will provide research funds to support students who wish to acquire training in a cross-disciplinary lab to promote their ability to perform translational research and compete for research funding as their career matures. In concept, trainees working in a clinical environment but desiring a career in translational research would benefit from a mentored program in a more basic science lab and a trainee in a basic research environment would benefit from a mentored program in a lab conducting translational research in a clinical environment.

Each year one or two $5,000 ARVO/VSS Research Fellowships will be offered. The goal is to fund one fellowship for an ARVO member-in-training who would benefit from training with a VSS member and one for a VSS member-in-training who would benefit from training with an ARVO member.

REMINDER:
Online Registration Closes
Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Register Now and Save!

VSS has joined other organizations in support of the March for Science on April 22, 2017. At least three members of the Board of Directors (David Brainard, Lynne Kiorpes and Andrew Watson) will attend the March in Washington and will carry a banner for our organization. If you would like to rally and march in Washington with VSS, please meet at the Albert Einstein Statue at 12 noon. Jeff Schall, Tony Norcia and Preeti Verghese will be marching in Nashville, San Jose and San Francisco, respectively. If you would like to join us at any of these locations, please send an email to .

Onward for Science!

Preeti Verghese
President, VSS Board of Directors, 2016-2017

The Vision Sciences Society is Honored to Present Jan J. Koenderink with the 2017 Ken Nakayama Medal for Excellence in Vision Science

Jan J. Koenderink, Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, University of Leuven (KU Leuven), Belgium, Department of Experimental Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands and Abteilung Allgemeine Psychologie, Justus-Liebig Universität, Giessen, Germany Only a few scientists can be proud of a real breakthrough in vision science, very few can claim significant advances in multiple aspects of our visual experience, and almost none is an acclaimed researcher in two distinct disciplines. Jan Koenderink is this unique vision scientist. In both human and machine vision, Jan Koenderink has contributed countless breakthroughs towards our understanding of the properties of receptive field profiles, of the different types of optic flow, of the surface characteristics of three-dimensional shape, and more recently of the space of color vision. Together with his lifelong collaborator Andrea van Doorn, Jan Koenderink has approached each new problem in a humble, meticulous, and elegant way. While some papers may scare the less mathematical inclined reader, a bit of perseverance inevitably leads to the excitement of sharing with him a true insight. These insights have profoundly influenced our understanding of the functioning of the visual system. Some examples include: the structure of images seen through the lens of incremental blurring that led to the now ubiquitous wavelet representation of images, the minimal number of points and views to reconstruct a unique class of three-dimensional structures known as affine representations, the formal description of Alberti’s inventory of shapes from basic differential geometry principles, the careful description of the interplay between illumination and surface reflectance and texture, and many more. The approach of Jan Koenderink to systematically work in parallel on theoretical derivations and on psychophysical experimentations reminds us that behavioral results are uninterpretable without a theoretical framework, and that theoretical advances remain detached from reality without behavioral evidence. Jan Koenderink trained in astronomy with Maarten Minnaert at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, and then in physics and mathematics. He earned his PhD in artificial intelligence and visual psychophysics with Maarten Bouman from Utrecht. He held faculty positions in Utrecht and Groningen in the Netherlands, and guest professorships from Delft University of Technology, MIT in the USA, Oxford in the UK, and KU Leuven in Belgium. Most significantly, he headed the “Physics of Man” department at the University of Utrecht for more than 30 years. Jan Koenderink has authored more than 700 original research articles and published 2 books of more than 700 pages each. He received many honors, among them a Doctor Honoris Causa in Medicine from KU Leuven, the Azriel Rosenfeld lifelong achievement award in Computer Vision, the Wolfgang Metzger award, the Alexander von Humboldt prize, and is a fellow of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. The Ken Nakayama Medal is in honor of Professor Ken Nakayama’s contributions to the Vision Sciences Society, as well as his innovations and excellence 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. The nature of this work can be fundamental, clinical or applied. The Medal is not a lifetime career award and is open to all career stages. The Medal will be presented during the VSS Awards Session on Monday, May 22, 2017, 12:30 pm in Talk Room 2.

 

The Election for the VSS Board of Directors Is Now Open

The election for two new members of the VSS Board of Directors is now open. To cast your vote for two 4-year positions on the VSS Board, go to http://www.visionsciences.org/2017-election/. Please help shape the future of VSS.

You must be a Regular 2017 VSS Member to be eligible to vote.

The Election closes at 11:59 pm (latest time zone on the planet) on Friday, April 28, 2017. Please consider voting now to avoid missing the deadline.