[visionlist] PhD Studentships, University of St. Andrews

PhD studentships in Vision Science, University of St. Andrews

 

PhD studentships are available, for Sept 2014 start, in the Vision Labs at the University of St. Andrews (http://vislab.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/). The School of Psychology and Neuroscience offers School funded studentships.  This year, the group is also advertising 2 BBSRC funded EastBIO studentships (see individual supervisor details below).

 

St. Andrews has a strong vision group using a variety of techniques (including psychophysics, eye movements, EEG, fMRI, TMS, neuropsychology) to study the human visual system.  Ours is a highly multidisciplinary group, with members trained in biology, neuroscience, medicine, psychology, maths, physics and engineering. We welcome potential students from these and related disciplines.

 

Individual supervisors are offering projects in the following areas:

 

Justin Ales (jma23@st-andrews.ac.uk)

Research in my lab encompasses three topics: neuroimaging, vision, and computational modeling. Broadly, research projects will utilize multimodal neuroimaging techniques that combine both electroencephalographic (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study how the brain processes information.  Possible projects include investigating the neural representation of motion, or investgating how information processing adapts in response to changes in the environment. Feel free to contact me to discuss these, or other, projects.

I am advertising a BBSRC studentship:

http://vislab.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/ales-harris-eastbio-studentship-2014/

 

 

Daniela Balslev  (daniela.balslev@st-andrews.ac.uk )

The student will use state of the art tools in cognitive neuroscience (transcranial magnetic stimulation and  functional magnetic resonance imaging in healthy and patient populations) to investigate how sensorimotor signals contribute to spatial cognition. We hypothesize that the oculomotor command and the re-afferent input for the eye muscles are fundamental building blocks in the neural representations that support movement, attention or object recognition. The ultimate goal of this research is to understand how the brain represents space and how a breakdown in these representations in neurological patients can lead to disabilities such as optic ataxia, spatial neglect or simultanagnosia.  

I am advertising a BBSRC studentship:

http://vislab.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/balslev-otto-eastbio2014/

 

 

Julie Harris (jh81@st-andrews.ac.uk)

I am interested in how a variety of visual attributes are computed and represented in the visual system. PhD projects are available on binocular vision (perceiving depth from binocular disparity and other cues to depth), the perception of 3-D motion, and self-motion, and on the perception of camouflage in human and animal vision. I primarily use psychophysics, eye movement recording, and computational modeling techniques. If you have a specific project in mind, in another area of space or shape perception, or human locomotion, I'd be keen to discuss possible supervision.

 

Tom Otto (to7@st-andrews.ac.uk)

Potential students will work at the interface between perceptual and cognitive neuroscience using mainly mental chronometry and mathematical modelling as methods. I would be particularly interested in supervising PhD projects that investigate the cognitive architecture underlying human decision making behaviour in multisensory settings including audition, vision, and touch; the involvement of basic logical decision gates; as well as sources of variability and history effects in speeded response time tasks.

 

 

 

Dhanraj Vishwanath  (dv10@st-andrews.ac.uk)

Research projects are currently focused on three main areas:  3d perception, eye movements, attention and perception and hand-eye coordination. Specific current topics include: why and how we obtain the qualitative sense of immersion and realism in stereopsis (e.g. in 3D movies); the linkage between eye movement localization and spatial distribution of attention; predictive control of saccadic and smooth pursuit eye movements during hand-eye coordination tasks typical of human-computer interaction.  We have strong links with the Computer-Human Interaction group in the Computer Science School and would gladly consider joint supervised projects.

 

 

Further details of our work can be found on the Vision Labs website, and associated PI sites:

http://vislab.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/

 

Funding is competitive, the level of funding is partly dependent on your citizenship and UK-residency status. Deadlines for application are 1^st February 2014 and require formal submission via University of St. Andrews, but you will need to develop a project outline in conjunction with a supervisor first. In the first instance you should contact potential supervisors directly. See the following for application details:

http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/psychology/prospective/pg/opportunities/#Ph_D

 

 

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Prof. Julie M. Harris
School of Psychology and Neuroscience
University of St Andrews
South St.
St. Andrews
KY16 9JP

Tel +44-1334-462061
Fax +44-1334-463042
Web: http://julieharrislab.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/

The University of St. Andrews is a charity
registered  in Scotland: SC012532.