Congratulations to Drs Irina Harris and Alex Holcombe on being selected for the Australian Research Council Future Fellowships. The Fellowhips were announced by the Minister of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Senator Kim Carr. Irina and Alex are among 200 outstanding national and international researchers who will be the first prestigious Future Fellows. Details of their projects are below:

Dr Irina Harris

Project Title: Seeing the forest and the trees: Cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying recognition of individual objects and sets

Project Summary: When confronted with a set of similar objects, such as a crowd of faces or a flow of oncoming cars, human observers can rapidly and seemingly automatically extract summary statistics of these sets of objects (e.g., mean expression or location). This research will provide insights into how the human visual system executes this massive feat of computation. This represents a vital step in understanding vision in general and in eventually applying our knowledge to the development of artificial vision systems and to rehabilitation of visual disorders. The research will also investigate the effects of attentional load on perception of summary statistics of the environment, which is critical for tasks such as driving in busy traffic.

Funding:
2009: $ 85,800
2010: $ 170,775
2011: $ 168,250
2012: $ 166,550
2013: $ 83,275

Dr Alex Holcombe

Project Title: Position perception, attention, object motion, and action

Project Summary: The research will achieve a deeper understanding of the neural processing of the visual perception of position, and of the associated behavioural limits. This will provide a foundation for the development of a range of technologies to assist disabled and elderly people. The results will help reveal the link between the perception of moving objects and the capacity for visually guided movement. This link will benefit areas such as engineering of vehicles and road systems, and the design of telepresence systems. The first applications are likely to be in the rehabilitation of brain injury and the decline of mental function with age.

Funding:
2009: $ 78,320
2010: $ 162,748
2011: $ 153,598
2012: $ 137,000
2013: $ 67,830

Well done!