York University Biology Professor Kohitij Kar, from the Faculty of Science, will host the recipient of a prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Postdoctoral Global Fellowship in his lab starting November 2024. They will collaborate on advancing research in artificial intelligence and visual tracking for 2 years. Click here for more information
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Modelling Fair at York University 2024
Y-EMERGE and CDM will be hosting a Modelling Fair on November 14, 2024, from 1 to 4 PM at Vari Hall, York University. Click here to register
Entangled Dimensions: Art in the Age of Neural Media
Immersion Gallery Exhibition curated by Ryan Kelln of Toronto-based artists exploring human/non-human intelligence through digital and neural media art. Click here for more details.
New, renewed Canada Research Chairs advance neuroscience, disability studies at York U
Jeffery Schall has been appointed as Tier I CRC in Translating Neuroscience. For more information visit YFile.
Graduate physics professor shares machine learning knowledge with academic community
Joel Zylberberg, developed a graduate course to help students understand recent advances in machine learning techniques. For more information visit YFile.
York study explores movement in space
Professor Laurence Harris, along with researchers at York University led and collaborated with Canadian Space Agency and NASA. For more information visit YFile.
Researchers share how real-life situations advance understanding of brain function
Doug Crawford is a senior author on the paper titled "Perceptual-Cognitive Integration for Goal-Directed Action in Naturalistic Environments". Click here to read more.
York’s world-leading vision research program looks towards the future
York University has highlighted VISTA's 7 year milestone in their newsletter. Click here to read more.
Study: Even Smartest AI Models Don’t Match Human Visual Processing
York University has just issued a press release for core member, James Elder's paper which came out on September 16, 2022 in iScience. This is a collaboration between former VISTA postdoc, Nick Baker and highlights how deep-network models take potentially dangerous ‘shortcuts’ in solving complex recognition tasks. Click here to read the full press release.
Vector Institute for AI Highlights York VISTA Startup AttentiveVision
The Vector Institute has highlighted VISTA startup, AttentiveVision, in their blog post. Click here to read more.
Study Reveals Brain Fine-Tuned to Symmetries in Patterns
Symmetries can be found at a variety of scales in images of natural scenes. More than 100 years of vision research has demonstrated that symmetry plays a role in many domains of visual perception. Most research has focused on one type of symmetry, reflection or mirror symmetry, but there are in fact four fundamental symmetries, […]
How Masks Disrupt Human Face Recognition
This VISTA Funded project studies how face perception abilities are altered by face masks. Face masks are an essential tool in our efforts to minimize COVID-19 transmission, and those masks are here for the foreseeable future. Therefore, it is important to understand how masks affect our most important perceptual ability, that is face perception. This […]
MoVi: A Large Multipurpose Motion and Video Dataset
Large high-quality datasets of human body shape and kinematics lay the foundation for modelling and simulation approaches in computer vision, computer graphics, and biomechanics. Creating datasets that combine naturalistic recordings with high-accuracy data about ground truth body shape and pose is challenging because different motion recording systems are either optimized for one or the other. […]
Visual Perception in the Department of Philosophy
Sam Clarke is a VISTA Post-Doctoral Fellow and philosopher interested in visual perception. His supervisor is Professor Jacob Beck in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies. In my research, I seek to understand the informational resources that visual systems use to inform their computations and the structure (or format) this information takes. To […]
Auto-Labelling of Markers in Optical Motion Capture
Saeed Ghorbani is an EECS PhD student in the BioMotionLab directed by VISTA Core Researcher Niko Troje and hosted by the Department of Biology. His current project involves the development of new software to automatically label body position and motion in 3D space. Improvements to 'Marker Labelling' like this will save time and money for industries […]
Meta-Watching and Facial Recognition Cinema
Aaron Tucker is a PhD student in VISTA Core Member Graham Wakefield's lab. Within the Faculty of Art, Media, Performance & Design, Aaron's research explores the notion of cinema and perception from the perspective of the facial recognition enabled camera. “Meta-Watching and The Ontology of Facial Recognition Cinema” by Aaron Tucker won the Film Studies […]
Neuroimaging to Understand Action and Coordination
Modulation of large-scale brain systems using network-based neuroimaging and non-invasive brain stimulation to understand and improve goal-directed cognition and action. The relationship between what our eyes see and the brain heavily influences our understanding and ability to physically react to our world. While hand-eye coordination has been studied for thousands of years little is understood […]
Neural Processes in Motor Adaptation
The Neural Processes in Visually Driven, Explicit Motor Adaptation. "It wasn’t me: External source attribution effects on hand-position estimates." People constantly adapt movements to dynamic conditions within both the environment and our own body, while taking the source of errors into account. In Denise Henriques’ lab, we investigate adaptation of reaching movements by altering visual […]
Kinesthetic Creativity in Virtual Reality
VISTA Master’s Scholarship winner, Sarah Vollmer, is the first digital arts and computer science trainee in the VISTA program. Her project supervisor is VISTA Core Member Graham Wakefield. She explains: “If I could define my program and desired outcome of academically inclined intellectual pursuits it would be from the perspective of the journey, and not […]
Video - Laurence Harris & Understanding Space
Read the latest update in YFile. Our vestibular system helps us self-orient relative to gravity. But what can astronauts, living in the absence of gravity, teach us about our spaces? How do we know which way is up? Are things always exactly as far away as they seem? How do people orient themselves in time and […]
Video - Lauren Sergio & How the Brain & Body Work Together
For those with concussion or dementia who have difficulty with movement, pinpointing the problem can yield answers. In everyday life, there are lots of activities where people need to think while coordinating movement to interact with something. It could be focusing on a task and looking at a computer screen, all while moving a mouse […]
Video - Michael Brown & Do You See What I See?
Every phone camera captures colour a little bit differently, which can be trouble if you're using one to get a diagnosis. With the rise of smartphones, most adults carry a camera with them wherever they go. Most consumers would be happy if these cameras captured everyday moments as snappy and bright images that could be […]
Video - Rick Wildes & Helping Surgeons Live in the Moment
Surgical plans are imperfect guides, but new technological tools could help lighten the load for surgeons doing complex, delicate work. Every day in the operating room, surgeons make complex visual transformations in their minds. Any pre-operative information that they have based on medical imaging is usually static; however, during surgery there are many moving parts. […]
Distributed Functional Cell Assemblies
Dynamic spike-field signatures of distributed functional cell assemblies. VISTA Travel Awards are available not only for Project Investigators to travel abroad but also for Project Investigators to bring international scholars to York University. The first incoming VISTA scholar, Dr. Ryan Canolty, is a Research Scientist in Computational Science at Vanderbilt University in the USA. His […]
Video - How 'Double Vision' Can Be a Good Thing
A pair of York University collaborators are showing how a cross-disciplinary approach can help solve some tough vision-related challenges. In the quest to keep improving on cutting-edge technologies, it’s important not to lose sight of opportunities to use technological innovations to improve people’s lives. Collaborators Doug Crawford and Richard Wildes are both researchers at York University’s Vision: Science to Applications […]
The German Center for Vertigo and Balance Disorders
Dr. Denise Henriques, VISTA Training Committee Lead and Core Researcher, received a VISTA Travel Award to collaborate with German researchers in the field of sensorimotor functions. Her visit, to the German Center for Vertigo and Balance Disorders in Munich, allowed her to continue collaborations with Thomas Brandt (Director) in their investigation of multisensory integration and […]
Video - James Elder & Artificial Intelligence
We often forget how complex human vision is... and that poses plenty of challenges for those trying to teach machines how to "see". “One thing that’s really exciting about studying vision is that it is so powerful that we don’t actually think about it from day to day. We just use it. It’s only when […]
VISTA's First Start-Up - DropletLab
Two of the most important properties of droplet surfaces are contact angle and surface tension. The traditional means for measuring these properties require expensive, bulky, and complex technology. VISTA Associate, Professor Alidad Amirfazli, and his team at the Surface Engineering and Instrumentation Lab (SEiL), are breaking this 30-year-old design mold. Using a VISTA Prototyping fund, […]
Video - Shayna Rosenbaum & Remapping a Damaged Mind
New insight on the hippocampus, which creates memories, could help patients dealing with neurological diseases. The hippocampus is part of the brain that is most known for its role in forming and retaining personal memories. But beyond allowing people to remember what they did yesterday, the hippocampus also helps people navigate their environments by helping […]
Vision-Based Diver Robot Interactions at Depth
Lassonde School of Engineering graduate student Robert Codd-Downey received a VISTA Doctoral Scholarship in early 2017. His research is supervised by VISTA Core Member Michael Jenkin and focuses on ‘Vision based diver robot interactions at depth’, a project funded by NSERC’s Canadian Field Robotics Network (NCFRN). More specifically, Codd-Downey’s project explores how communication can be […]
Video - Matthew Kyan & Deciphering Health and History
Machine learning tools can sift through huge databases of photos and video, helping archive historical objects and interpret medical images. Cameras are everywhere these days: capturing everyday moments, recording exceptional events and objects, and helping doctors take a closer look at our bodies when we’re sick. But while we’re very good at collecting this information, it […]
Vection and the International Space Station
The Vection team is led by Core Researcher, Laurence Harris, and includes Core Researchers Michael Jenkin and Robert Allison from the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science. VISTA Postdoctoral Fellow Nils-Alexander Bury and graduate student Meaghan McManus are also contributors to the project. The team aims to find out how visual information creates the […]
Video - Robert Allison & Taking VR to the 'Next Level'
Virtual reality is a new way to watch, but technology isn't enough, says one expert. We also need fresh approaches to make it compelling. “The lines between reality and virtual reality will become increasingly blurred. I think technology is steamrolling ahead. The technical advances are going to be there. It’s really up to us to see […]
Visual-Conceptual Processing Interactions
Spatio-temporal Dynamics of Visual-Conceptual Processing Interactions Dr. Caitlin Mullin is the recipient of the first VISTA Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship and is the Trainee Representative on the VISTA Leadership Committee. In 2018, she joined the lab of VISTA Core Member, Dale Stevens, with a research focus on “Characterizing the Spatio-temporal Dynamics of Visual-Conceptual Processing Interactions”. Mullin […]
Video - Denise Henriques & Accessible Design
Point-to-point reaching is a lot more complex than it may seem. Understanding it can help countless people better interact with their world. For most healthy young people, the motion of point-to-point reaching seems simple: starting from point A, you move your arm to take it to point B. But many systems are involved in making this […]
High Sensitivity Roadside Cannabis Screening
VISTA Associate Member Nima Tabatabaei has received a $50,000 Prototyping Fund to develop a non-invasive roadside test for cannabis use detection. Dr. Tabatabaei is a researcher in York University’s Lassonde School of Engineering and is an expert in the design and development of thermal and optical imaging technologies for early disease diagnosis and screening. He […]
Video - Rick Wildes & Processing Images
What does it mean to "see"? The answer might help us train artificial systems to analyze the staggering volume of videos online. “We’re trying to understand, from a fundamental principles point of view, what it means to see.” Computational vision scientist Richard Wildes, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at York University, studies computer systems as […]
Mobility Assessment Technology Tool (MATT)
Dr. Lauren Sergio, a VISTA Core Member, and her team have recently developed a tool that assesses decline in mobility in aging patients. The Mobility Assessment Technology Tool (MATT) is a user-friendly, low-cost, non-invasive, computerized vision system that objectively and reproducibly measures gait or balance mobility of a patient based on the standard Tinetti kinesiology […]
Video – Doug Crawford & What Do You See?
Vision shapes so much of people's interaction with the world. One researcher is delving into how it all works in a unique way. So much of the brain is involved in vision and visual perception that almost any brain damage can have an impact not only on how a person sees, but also on how a […]
