Research positions in visual and auditory modelling and psychophysics

[Sue Denham]

Plymouth Institute of Neuroscience

Applications are invited for the following positions: 2 postdoctoral
research fellowships and 2 research studentships in visual and
auditory modelling and psychophysics.

The open positions are part of a project, "Attend-to-learn and
learn-to-attend with neuromorphic VLSI", funded by the European
Community (IST-2001-38099), which combines perceptual, computational,
and hardware research.  In addition to the University of Plymouth, UK,
the project also involves, ETH Zurich and University of Bern,
Switzerland, the National Institute of Health, Rome, Italy, Siemens
AG, Germany, and the UC Davis, USA.  Research at the Plymouth
Institute of Neuroscience received a rating of 5 in the 2001 RAE
exercise.

The aim of the project is to develop a general architecture for
memory-guided attention using both software modelling and neuromorphic
VLSI technology. The architecture will be tested on natural visual and
auditory stimuli and its performance compared to human
observers/listeners.  Plymouth will be responsible for developing
visual and auditory stimuli that are restricted enough to be tractable
by an artificial system, yet rich enough for psychophysical tests of
attention and learning in human observers/listeners.


Specific tasks will include:

  a.. designing feature spaces that efficiently encode of natural images
and sounds
  b.. conducting psychophysical experiments to characterise attention
and learning with novel classes of synthetic images and sounds
  c.. developing computational models for visual and auditory feature
saliency and feature tracking
  d.. providing performance benchmarks that are suitable for testing the
models and hardware components developed by project partners
  e.. disseminating the results at international conferences.
Applicants for the postdoctoral research fellowships should have, or
expect to obtain, a Ph.D. in Psychophysics, Computational Modelling, or
a related field.  Experience in information theoretic analysis is also
desirable.

Applicants for research studentships should have, or expect to obtain, a
good honours degree in Psychology, Neuroscience, Physics, Computing, or
related fields.  The ideal candidate will possess good analytical,
experimental and computational skills.

All posts are available from 1 September 2002 for 3 years.  Salaries
will be internationally competitive and reflect the successful
candidate's qualifications.

 For further information, please contact Prof. Jochen Braun (visual
psychophysics and modelling, +44 1752 232 711, achim at pion.ac.uk) or Dr.
Sue Denham (auditory psychophysics and modelling, +44 1752 232610,
sue at pion.ac.uk).