The Applied Vision Association very kindly awarded me the Richard Eagle Memorial Award in order to fund a laboratory visit to the University of Pennsylvania’s Computational Perception and Cognition laboratory in May, 2010.
The main purpose of the visit was to present my PhD work to a group of researchers from a broad range of disciplines. It was an ideal opportunity to foster some new collaborations with people who are interested in a wide variety of areas within vision science, ranging from traditional psychophysicists, to neuroscientists proficient in computational modelling. It was also a very valuable exercise in gaining both experience and confidence in giving a long-format seminar outside of the comfort zone of one’s normal peer group.
The work that I presented centres on a novel methodology for measuring velocity estimation in human eye movements. It focuses on if and how humans use velocity information in the time period leading up to a saccade being made, in order to produce accurate responses to moving targets. Being able to present work that I am currently conducting allowed me to garner some very valuable feedback on my research, and has provided me with a number of interesting avenues of investigation for the last few months of my PhD.
It was a great honour and a humbling experience to present my work to a number of well-respected and experienced researchers. The University of Pennsylvania in general, and the Perception group in particular, have a long-standing reputation for world-class research, and as such, my visit was a uniquely informative experience that was ideal for a final year PhD student. I would like to thank Dr. Alan Stocker for kindly hosting me for the talk, and I am also immensely grateful for everyone at the Applied Vision Association, who allowed this visit to become a reality.