Our upcoming BVI event is going to be a bit different and exciting! We're trying out a new approach to discussing vision research: while we'll still have our traditional seminars, this time we're hosting a panel discussion with three distinguished members. We'll be diving into a specific scholarly theme, exploring research culture, sharing personal stories, and tackling some of the big challenges in our field. Laszlo Talas will be moderating these sessions and will kickstart the conversation with some questions.

We want you, the audience, to be an active part of this discussion, therefore we'll keep the event open and interdisciplinary. So, if you've ever had burning questions about a particular topic or you're simply curious about vision research in general, this event is the perfect opportunity to ask and learn! Just like always, we'll wrap up the panel with some nibbles and wine to keep the conversation going and spark some networking opportunities.

Our first panel discussion will explore one of the core BVI themes: “Finding and hiding things”. Exploring the world through visual senses to seek things of interest, including food, friends, and mates have been a major task in life since eyes evolved over half a billion years ago. The need to find and hide influenced the colours of animals, had a major impact on human culture, and is one of the main drivers behind artificial intelligence. To explore this topic, we picked:

• Innes Cuthill, Professor of Behavioural Ecology in the School of Biological Sciences and one of the leads of the Camo Lab. With a research career spanning four decades, Innes’ work unites physiologists, perceptual psychologists, and computational neuroscientists to understand how animal coloration (notably camouflage) evolves in response to animal colour vision.
• Cedric van den Berg, Swiss National Foundation postdoctoral research fellow in the Ecology of Vision Laboratory in the School of Biological Sciences. As one of the masterminds behind the Quantitative Colour Pattern Analysis computational framework and avid underwater photographer, Cedric brings a unique combination of mathematical tools and extensive field experience to the table.
• Andy Flack, Senior Lecturer in Modern and Environmental History in the Department of History. Andy is an animal and environmental historian, working primarily on human engagements with the non-human animal world with a special focus on the “nocturnal problem”: the challenge of encountering and understanding nature by night due to technological limitations and our own biological heritage of being diurnal, i.e., active during the day.

Panel discussion of scientists Dall-E 2