An event celebrating the successes of York University’s VISTA (Vision: Science to Applications) members and graduate trainees was held for the first time on Feb. 21, at Black Creek Pioneer Village.
The VISTA Research Retreat, an event that organizations hope to run annually, created opportunities to introduce new faculty members and discuss updates on VISTA-funded projects.
Post-graduate fellows and second-year PhD scholarship awardees were also given an opportunity to present their results during the all-day event.
The day was divided into speaker and poster sessions, and ended with a poster prize ceremony. The poster prize winners were: first place, Shorab Salimian (Convolutional Network Model of Allocentric Landmark Impact on Target Localization); and two second-place winners, Alica Rogojin (Sex-related differences in the relationship between dementia risk and cognitive-motor integration performance) and Lindsey Fraser (Are significant stimuli susceptible to sensory suppression?).
VISTA has organized and funded a number of events focused on partners, innovation and external speakers, and this was the first event designed for members and trainees to meet and review their own research progress. Organizers of the retreat plan to make it an annual event.
“It’s truly a pleasure to see the amount of work accomplished so far by VISTA members and trainees. The retreat gives us an opportunity to celebrate the achievements of graduate scholarship and post-doctoral fellowship winners as well as core, associate and affiliate members of the program,” said, Professor Doug Crawford, scientific director of VISTA. “The breadth and quality of the research is already amazing, and I look forward to even more diversification next year as VISTA’s recruitment and influence continues to spread beyond our traditional science, health and engineering background to include applications in philosophy and the arts.”
VISTA is making major advances in areas as diverse as companion robots for the elderly, brain interfaces for visual prosthetics, editing photography, mitigating cognitive decline, and multisensory research in space, as well as fundamental discoveries in biological and computational vision.
Academics and the general public can access this research directly by registering for the International Conference on Predictive Vision running June 10 to 13.
Vision: Science to Applications (VISTA) is a Canada First Research Excellence Fund (CFREF)-funded research program designed to extend the study of vision science at York University. The 2019 Research Retreat brought together more than 80 core, associate, affiliate, post-doctoral fellow, PhD and masters researchers, along with VISTA staff.