Connectionists: Phd position studying motion camouflage available at Bristol University

[Roland Baddeley]

PhD position available on Motion Camouflage

A three year fully-funded CASE studentship at the University of Bristol is
available to study animal camouflage. In particular the project will
investigate how moving animals minimize their visibility. The student will
be primarily based in the Department of Experimental Psychology, but the
project is strongly inter-disciplinary (at the interface between biology,
perceptual psychology and computer vision) and will be co-supervised by
Roland Baddeley and Nick Scott-Samuel (Department of Experimental
Psychology), Innes Cuthill (School of Biological Sciences) and Adam Shohet
(from the defence research company QinetiQ). The student will also be a
member of the Bristol Vision Institute, one of the university's prioritised
research themes. Bristol has an outstanding strength in this field, spanning
four University Faculties (Science, Engineering, Medicine and Art) -
including the Departments of Experimental Psychology, Biological Sciences,
Computer Science, Engineering Mathematics, Mathematics, Electrical and
Electronic Engineering, Bristol Eye Hospital, Anatomy and History of Art.  

 There will be a fair amount of flexibility on how this problem is
approached, including approaches based on 1) psychophysics using human
observers: manipulating various characteristics of artificial animal
camouflage patterns within natural realistic backgrounds and observing which
factors affect their visibility. 2) Natural image statistics and the
statistics of animal coloration patterns: viewing both backgrounds and
animal coloration patterns as textures, and using machine learning
techniques to look at the mapping between environmental niche, and the
coloration patterns displayed. 3) Looking at the spatio-temporal statistics
of animal environments with a view to seeing which aspects of animal
coloration will aid in reducing the visibility of a moving animal; and 4)
Constructing and comparing various simple ideal observer models of
predator/prey detection, and comparing these with observed behaviour. This
list is not exclusive, but as can be seen, the position would be of
potential interest not only to a behavioural ecologist who wants to learn
about vision, image analysis and computer modelling, but also a more
computational person who would like to apply their skills in a really very
interesting area. The list of supervisors includes people with interests and
skills in areas ranging from motion perception, to image modelling, to
behavioural ecology, to the application of these ideas to designing man-made
camouflage.  

 To apply, download and fill in the form "Postgraduate research programme -
application form" at
http://www.bris.ac.uk/prospectus/postgraduate/2008/intro/8. Note that where
the form requires you to state the source of funding, put "Already secured -
CASE Award funded by QinetiQ" and in the section "Outline of proposed
research" put "Not applicable - research proposal written by supervisors".
Send the completed application form to the Faculty of Science (NOT the
supervisors) at the address given. The web page also has referee forms which
you should download, send to your (two) referees, and ask them to send the
references directly to the Faculty of Science. 

 For more information email Roland Baddeley at:
Roland.Baddeley at bristol.ac.uk In any case, it would also be a good idea to
email Roland to say you have applied, after contacting Innes Cuthill, so
that we can chase up the Faculty Office if they are slow in passing
information on. A poster version of this message is available at
http://fleeting.psy.bris.ac.uk/Motion%20camouflage.pdf

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