Monday, May 19, 2025, 2:30 – 5:30 pm, Royal Tern

Organizers: William Broderick (Flatiron Institute)

Speakers: William Broderick (Flatiron Institute); Edoardo Balzani (Flatiron Institute); Sarah Jo Venditto (Flatiron Institute); Guillaume Viejo (Flatiron Institute)

This satellite event is a hands-on tutorial for the open source plenoptic python library (https://plenoptic.org/). After a brief introductory presentation, I will walk participants through a jupyter notebook, explaining how to use plenoptic to better understand computational visual models. Participants will be expected to follow along on their laptops, either running the code locally or using a provided binder instance (https://jupyter.org/binder) on the cloud (with the environment installed and GPUs available). The goal is to demonstrate for attendees the sorts of scientific questions that can be addressed with plenoptic and encourage them to use it in their own research.

While the exact content may change, I intend to introduce attendees to model metamers[1] and eigendistortions[2], and show how they can be used to understand and compare a handful of simple visual models (e.g., a linear Gaussian convolutional model, linear center-surround convolutional model, and a simple model of gain control using divisive normalization).

The session will be interactive, with opportunities for attendees to ask and answer questions. I will lead the entire session, and will be accompanied by several teaching assistants, who will circulate throughout the room to address any technical issues attendees encounter. Given this, attendance will be capped at 30, and a smaller room would be beneficial.

[1]: e.g., as used in “A parametric texture model based on joint statistics of complex wavelet coefficients”, Portilla and Simoncelli, 2000

[2]: e.g., as used in “Eigen-distortions of hierarchical representations,” Berardino et al., 2017

Sunday, May 18, 2025, 12:45 – 2:15 pm, Blue Heron

Organizers: Laura Cacciamani (California Polytechnic State University); Benjamin Balas (North Dakota State University)

Speakers: Laura Cacciamani (California Polytechnic State University); Benjamin Balas (North Dakota State University); Nestor Matthews (Denison University); Anna Kosovicheva (University of Toronto, Mississauga)

Traditional teaching of courses like Sensation and Perception relies on lectures, textbooks, and exams. How can we better engage students in class and beyond? In this satellite event, we will present and discuss some novel, fun methods of teaching vision-related content, including hands-on activities, experiments, and projects that can be used for either in-person or online courses. We will cover potential benefits and challenges, as well as practical considerations such as how and when one could implement these approaches. We will also consider how we can use these unique teaching methods to engage students from diverse backgrounds, foster inclusivity, and raise awareness about sensory disabilities. This event will include some short presentations and demonstrations from seasoned instructors followed by an open forum for any and all current or future instructors of vision-related courses to discuss the presented ideas as well as exchange new ideas, best practices, and materials. We invite the VSS community to come learn from others and share their own experiences, thoughts, and approaches to teaching.

Saturday, May 17, 2025, 12:45 – 2:15 pm, Blue Heron

Organizers: Matthias Pusch, Co-Founder, WorldViz VR; Sado Rabaudi, Product Manager, Solutions Architect, WorldViz VR; Dan Tinkham, Head Of Sales, Americas, WorldViz VR; Kenneth Karthik, Technical Development, WorldViz VR

WorldViz VR will give an educational seminar and hands-on demonstration of the latest virtual reality and mixed reality consumer devices with built in eye tracking and will explain how this equipment can be used in a research context. This presentation will include a high level overview of virtual reality and mixed reality key concepts as well as explanations for how to create custom immersive experiments using the latest software, including a demonstration of the SightLab VR Pro drag-and-drop VR + eye tracking toolkit. WorldViz VR will also provide examples of notable publications and successful use cases for virtual reality + eye tracking research across various academic disciplines. Participants will walk away with a better understanding of currently available immersive technology and how they can use it in their own research – they may be surprised how easy it is.

Monday, May 19, 2025, 2:30 – 5:30 pm, Blue Heron

Organizers: Dr. Nilsu Atilgan (The Readability Consortium); Dr. Ben D. Sawyer (University of Central Florida)

Speakers: Sofie Beier, PhD (Royal Danish Academy); MJ Kim, PhD (Meta Reality Labs); Hilary Palmen, PhD (Google Fonts); Denis Pelli, PhD (New York University); Shaun Wallace, PhD (University of Rhode Island); Ben Wolfe, PhD (University of Toronto); Yingzi Xiong, PhD (Johns Hopkins University)

Overview:
Building on the success of last year’s workshop, titled “The Vision Science of Digital Readability: Community-Building Workshop” (see the website here). which garnered overwhelming interest with standing-room-only attendance, we aim to create a more focused and attendee-oriented event this year. Last year’s workshop served as an introduction, bringing together the community to discuss the emerging field of digital readability, its opportunities, and challenges.

This year, we seek to build on the momentum by fostering deeper interdisciplinary collaborations and advancing our collective understanding of key issues in the field. We will focus on two critical themes that emerged from last year’s discussions:

1- Metrics

Defining Realistic Goals: We aim to establish clear evidence-based optimization goals that include preference, comfort, retention, and speed. Expanding beyond traditional metrics such as reading speed, we can focus on measures like practical accuracy and usability in diverse applications, ensuring readability meets its functional demands.

Advancing Experimental Tools: Equally critical is the development of advanced psychophysical and behavioral tools to quantify readability. These tools should be designed for experimental rigor, enabling the assessment of readability in both controlled lab settings and ecologically valid contexts, such as AR/VR environments and daily use. Leveraging the expertise of the vision science community, we aim to identify gaps and develop robust experimental paradigms.

2- Inclusivity

Adaptive and Individualized Text Design for Low Vision and Diverse Groups: Enhancing readability requires identifying and optimizing text characteristics for individuals with low vision and other specific needs. Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, the focus should be on flexible, adaptable designs that consider individual preferences and factors like age, accessibility, and demographics. Tailored text solutions can address the unique challenges faced by diverse reading populations, ensuring greater accessibility and comfort.

Underrepresented Languages: We must prioritize research and design efforts for widely spoken but digitally underrepresented languages, ensuring that fonts and digital readability solutions are inclusive and accessible to all linguistic groups.

Workshop Structure

Pre-Workshop Activities

Group Assignment: One month prior to the workshop, participants will be pre-assigned to smaller groups that include individuals from diverse disciplines and backgrounds. This encourages collaboration and interdisciplinary thinking. Each group will receive an introductory email, allowing participants to connect even before the event.

Pre-Workshop Discussions: Participants will be asked to submit discussion questions a month before the workshop. These questions will serve as the foundation for small group discussions, allowing the content to be tailored to the participants’ interests.
In-Person Workshop Agenda

The Readability Consortium (TRC) is driving this workshop, we were formed in 2021 to progress reading research methodology and practice. We are motivated to act as a catalyst to facilitate the existence of a broader reading research community that progresses: Understanding reading processes and applying new technologies in ways that will enable people globally to reach their full reading potential, including, but not limited to, people with dyslexia and low vision.

Schedule (3 hours)

Monday, May 19, 2025, 2:30 – 4:00 pm, Jasmine

Organizers: Alexis Paez (MathWorks)

Speakers: Mario Kleiner (Psychotoolbox); Celia Foster (Psychotoolbox); Giles Holland (PsychBench); Justin Gardner (Stanford University – MGL Toolbox); Alexis Paez (MathWorks – Open Science); Matthew Abrams (INCF – Neuroscience Working Groups)

Many experimental studies in Vision Science fall within the realm of psychophysics, requiring precision of stimulus presentation combined with quantitative measurement of perception. Psychophysical vision science is accelerated by software tools such as Psychtoolbox (PTB), which enables diverse visual stimuli to be presented to subjects with careful timing of both stimulus and response. This satellite event will convene developers of various psychophysics software packages released with substantial or fully open-source code in MATLAB (a widely-used scientific computing language), to present their latest updates and respond to questions and feedback from the VSS community. The event will also include brief presentations/discussions by MathWorks (makers of MATLAB) and the INCF (an international organization dedicated to open and FAIR neuroscience).

Tuesday, May 20, 2025, 1:15 – 3:15 pm, Banyan/Citrus/Glades

Organizers: Chaz Firestone, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences (Johns Hopkins University) & Kevin Lande, Department of Philosophy & Centre for Vision Research (York University)

Speakers: Kathleen Akins (Simon Fraser University); Jacob Beck (York University)

We are also arranging for commentaries by vision scientists. Past commentators include Jeremy Wolfe, Talia Konkle, Bevil Conway, Ruth Rosenholtz, Isabel Gauthier, Frank Tong, Anya Hurlbert, and Phil Kellman.

The past decade has seen a resurgence in conversation between vision science and philosophy of perception on questions of fundamental interest to both fields, such as: What do we see? What is seeing for? What makes seeing different from remembering, deciding or imagining? The phiVis workshop is a forum for continuing and expanding this interdisciplinary conversation. Short talks by philosophers of perception that engage with the latest research in vision science will be followed by discussion with a slate of vision scientists.

Conversations between philosophers of vision and vision scientists have enriched research programs in both fields. On the one hand, the latest generation of philosophers of vision are deeply immersed in the scientific literatures on natural scene statistics, visual short-term memory, ensemble perception, contour integration, amodal completion, visual salience, multi-sensory integration, visual adaptation, and much else. On the other hand, vision scientists have found a great deal of value in responding to and thinking together with philosophers about the mechanisms and effects of perceptual constancies, attentional selection, object perception, and perceptual uncertainty, to name just a handful of topics. These conversations are not only intrinsically interesting for everyone involved, they have been fruitful sources of research and collaboration. However, opportunities for dialogue are all too rare, often occurring only through chance interactions or one-off workshops. The phiVis satellite is meant to be a platform to extend these discussions.

There will be an informal reception at the Demo Night BBQ, the evening before the workshop, with a couple of tables and wine. All are welcome to stop by!

For more information, visit: https://www.phivis.org/

Sunday, May 18, 2025, 7:15 – 8:45 pm, Banyan/Citrus

Sponsored by: Females of Vision et al (FoVea)

Organizers: Diane Beck, University of Illinois & Charisse B. Pickron, University of Minnesota

Two panelists will share ideas on demystifying the hidden curriculum in science– namely the implicit, but essential skills for self-advocacy. They will discuss strategies for advocating for oneself and provide guidance on teaching these skills to graduate and undergraduate students, supporting the development of a strong pipeline of future vision scientists.

Speakers:

Melissa Schoenlein, Assistant Professor of Psychology, High Point University, FoVea planning committee member

Mary A. Peterson, Professor Emerita, University of Arizona, FoVea planning committee member

FoVea is a group founded to advance the visibility, impact, and success of women in vision science (www.foveavision.org). We encourage vision scientists of all genders to participate in the workshops.

Sunday, May 18, 2025, 12:45 – 2:15 pm, Glades/Jasmine

Organizers: Jeremy Wilmer (Wellesley College); Sarah Kerns (Dartmouth College); Yang Wang (UCSD); Ouxun Jiang (Northwestern University)

This is the second Hands-on Data Visualization Brown Bag at VSS. The first was in 2022. Attendees had a good time and wanted the event to return, so here we are.

Short talks. Active and hands-on. Focused on providing attendees with first-hand experience with VSS members’ data visualization research and tool building efforts.

If you are interested in presenting, please apply here (https://forms.gle/kYiHszWo2hmHHhCRA). If you’d like to share thoughts or questions, or if you are planning to attend and want to let us know (encouraged but not required), you may do so here (https://forms.gle/ZZUic9EBubMVYnio9).

More information will be posted on the event webpage at ShowMyData.org/vss2025