CATLAB

Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU Summer 2016)

Posted on Oct 6, 2015

We are looking for outstanding students interested in a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) at the CatLab at Vanderbilt University this summer 2016. Our REU is part of an NSF-funded project entitled Perceptual Categorization in Real-World Expertise. This project uses online behavioral experiments to understand the temporal dynamics of perceptual expertise, measuring and manipulating the dynamics of object recognition and categorization at different levels of abstraction and assessing how those dynamics vary over measured levels of expertise, using computational models to test hypotheses about expertise mechanisms. Students have opportunities to work on projects ranging from the development of online experiments, development of analysis routines, and development and testing of computational models. This REU is especially appropriate for students interested in applying to graduate programs in psychology, vision science, cognitive science, or neuroscience. The REU provides a $5000 summer stipend, $500 per week for ten weeks; an additional $150 per week helps offsets the cost of housing and meals; a $250 travel allowance is also provided. REUs are restricted to undergraduate students currently enrolled in a degree program and must be U.S. citizens, U.S. nationals, or permanent residents of the United States.

PEN XXX Reunion Meeting

Posted on May 20, 2015

The Perceptual Expertise Network celebrated its 30th workshop by inviting current PEN members, previous PEN members, and PEN friends to a day of talks as well as a reunion dinner following the talks. This was held on May 14th, 2015 at the TradeWinds Island Grand Resort in St. Pete Beach, Florida, as a satellite to the annual VSS conference.

Speakers at PEN XXX were:
Thomas Palmeri (Vanderbilt), Opening remarks
Marlene Berhmann (Carnegie Mellon), Never the twain shall meet
Kim Curby (Macquarie University), Are faces super objects? Object-based benefits support holistic perception
Lisa Scott (UMass Amherst), How learning during infancy enhances and constrains brain and behavioral development
Bruno Rossion (University of Louvain), Understanding expertise in face perception with fast periodic visual stimulation
Suzy Scherf (Penn State), Puberty makes us different kinds of face experts
Jim Tanaka (Victoria), Bridging the expertise gap: From the laboratory to the real world
Mike Mack (UT Austin), The evolution of category knowledge: Linking learning models to the dynamics of neural representations
Jennifer Richler (Vanderbilt), Measuring individual differences in high-level vision in a latent-variables framework
Ben Cipollini (UCSD), Exploring anatomy and genetics of cortical asymmetries
Isabel Gauthier (Vanderbilt), 15 years of fMRI studies of expertise
Michael Tarr (Carnegie Mellon), Closing talk

Photos from the workshop can be found here:
http://catlab.psy.vanderbilt.edu/palmeri/public/PEN-XXX/album/index.html

Akash Umakantha wins Founder’s Medal

Posted on May 8, 2015

The Founder’s Medal is the top honor given to a graduate of Vanderbilt University. Cornelius Vanderbilt’s gifts to the university included endowment of this award, given since 1877 for first honors in each graduating class. Akash Umakantha, who has been working in the CatLab since the end of his freshman year, is this year’s recipient from the School of Engineering at Vanderbilt. Congratulations Akash!

Akash Umakantha, from West Chester, Ohio, is Founder’s Medalist for the School of Engineering. He graduated with a bachelor of engineering in electrical and biomedical engineering. Umakantha has been a researcher at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, the Vanderbilt Radiation Effects and Reliability Group and the Vanderbilt Department of Psychology. He has presented his research on models of decision-making at two international conferences. Working in Professor of Psychology Tom Palmeri’s laboratory after freshman year, he learned about mathematical models of decision-making and how to simulate complex mathematical equations on a computer. That experience inspired him to pursue an academic career in neuroscience and scientific computing. Umakantha served as an engineering tutor, and he volunteered in a 6th grade classroom through Vanderbilt Student Volunteers for Science. He is a member of engineering honor society Tau Beta Pi. Next fall, Umakantha will attend Carnegie Mellon University to pursue doctoral studies in neural computation and machine learning.