Speakers

Stephanie Badde

Tufts University

Loss of Vision Influences Temporal Perception Across the Senses

Stephanie Badde has a background in psychology and mathematics. She received her PhD from the University of Hamburg working with Brigitte Röder and went on to complete a post-doc at New York University with Michael Landy. She is now the Stibel Family Assistant Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at Tufts University. Her research focuses on the computations underlying perception across the different senses and their plasticity. Her approach combines psychophysics and computational modeling with neuroscientific methods and machine learning.

Robin Baurès

Toulouse Université

Should I stay or Should I Go? The Cerebral bases of Street Crossing Decision

Dr. Baurès is an Associate professor at Toulouse University. He obtained his PhD in 2007 and studies mostly how observers perceive the time-to-contact of a moving object, with various methods from behavioral to brain imaging experiments and with healthy participants and patients. Dr. Baurès also developed more applied research to train expert tennis and volleyball players to better anticipate the ball’s trajectory and hit/receive the ball, in particular to prepare the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. He is the Vice Dean for research in the Sport Sciences department, where he coordinates the research politic of the department and the 40 Professors or Associate Professors and 6 labs hosting them.

Melinda Benjumea

The Lighthouse of Houston

The Lighthouse of Houston: Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired

Melinda Benjumea is the Director of Behavioral Health Services at The Lighthouse of Houston. She brings over twenty years of experience working with individuals with various types of disabilities, as well as managing programs and leading staff. She has been with The Lighthouse since 2015, and is a Licensed Professional Counselor.

Alex Bowers

Harvard Medical School & Schepens Eye Research Institute of Massachusetts Eye and Ear

Driving with Impaired Vision

Alex Bowers is an optometrist with a PhD in vision rehabilitation research from Glasgow Caledonian University, Scotland. She is currently Associate Professor of Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School and Associate Scientist at Schepens Eye Research Institute of Massachusetts Eye and Ear, Boston, Massachusetts. Her research focuses on quantifying the effects of vision impairment on walking and driving in real and virtual environments, and evaluating the effects of devices and interventions to assist visually impaired people when walking and driving.

Patricia R. Delucia

Rice University

Factors that Affect Collision Perception and Implications for Individuals with Central Vision Loss

Dr. DeLucia is a professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences and is the Associate Dean for Research in the School of Social Sciences, at Rice University. She completed a PhD from Columbia University in 1989, followed by a National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. She served as a faculty member, and as an Associate Vice President for Research, at Texas Tech University where she worked for 27 years before moving to Rice University. Dr. DeLucia is a fellow of APA, APS, HFES, and the Psychonomic Society and served as President of APA Division 21 in 2010, and as Editor in Chief of Human Factors in 2014-2021. Her research focuses on the perception of collision, motion and depth, and multisensory integration, in normal and impaired vision; vigilance; human factors in transportation (e.g., manual and automated driving), and health care (minimally-invasive surgery, telehealth, medication administration).

Shirin Hassan

Indiana University

Assessing the Street-Crossing Decisions of Visually Impaired Pedestrians

Dr. Shirin E. Hassan is an Australian-trained optometrist, researcher and educator in low vision and is currently an Associate Professor at the Indiana University School of Optometry, Bloomington, IN. With funding from the NIH/NEI, Dr. Hassan has investigated the factors in safe and unsafe street crossing decision-making of visually impaired, blind and normally-sighted pedestrians, and exploring the potential for orientation and mobility training to improve these street crossing decisions. She also conducts studies on mobility, gait, balance control and the perceptions of normally-sighted, blind and visually impaired people towards autonomous vehicles. Dr. Hassan’s research has been presented at numerous international and national scientific meetings and her research has been published in leading vision journals such as Optometry and Vision Science and Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science. In addition to her research, Dr. Hassan teaches 3rd year optometry students on the principles of low vision rehabilitation, and she provides low vision rehabilitation to patients of the Indiana University School of Optometry’s Vision Rehabilitation Clinic.

Joseph K. Kearney

University of Iowa

The Effectiveness of Smartphone Warning and Alerts on Pedestrian Road Crossing

Joe Kearney received a B.A. in psychology from the University of Minnesota, an M.A. in psychology from the University of Texas, and an M.S. and Ph. D. in computer science from the University of Minnesota. He is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Iowa. He previously served as Chair of the Department of Computer Science, Director of the School of Library and Information Science, and Associate Dean and Interim Dean in the College and Liberal Arts and Sciences. Professor Kearney co-directs the Hank Virtual Environments Lab with Professor Jodie Plumert. His research focuses on how virtual environments can be used as laboratories for the study of human perception, action, and decision making with special focus on how children and adults cross traffic-filled roadways on a bike or on foot. Recent projects have included studies on how pedestrians and cyclists respond to adaptive headlights that highlight them on the edge of road, the influence of texting on pedestrian road crossing, the effectiveness of V2P technology that sends cell phone alerts and warnings to pedestrians, how two pedestrians jointly cross gaps in a stream of traffic, and distributed simulators that connect pedestrian and driving simulators in a shared virtual environment.

Andrew Kolarik

University of East Anglia

The Effect of Visual Loss on Navigating Using Echolocation or Sensory Substitution

>Andrew Kolarik completed his BA and PhD in Cardiff University in 2006. He has held postdoctoral positions at several institutions, including the University of Cambridge and Anglia Ruskin University, and has recently taken up a Lectureship at the University of East Anglia. He specializes in spatial hearing and the effects of sensory loss on auditory abilities, with a focus on the use of echolocation and sensory substitution devices for navigation without vision. He is a Fellow of the British Society of Audiology.

Gordon Legge

University of Minnesota

Designing Visually Accessible Spaces for People with Low Vision

Gordon received a Bachelor's degree in Physics from MIT in 1971, a Master's degree in Astronomy from Harvard in 1972, and a PhD in Experimental Psychology from Harvard in 1976. He then spent a postdoctoral year at the Physiological Laboratory, Cambridge University.

In 1977, Gordon joined the faculty of the University of Minnesota. From 2006 to 2012, he was Chair of the Psychology Department at Minnesota. He is currently director of the Minnesota Laboratory for Low-Vision Research, a founding member and scientific adviser for the Center for Applied and Translational Sensory Science (CATSS), and Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience.

Gordon’s research focuses on visual perception with primary emphasis on low vision. Ongoing projects in his lab deal with the roles of vision in reading and mobility, and the impact of impaired vision on visual centers in the brain.

Daniel Oberfeld-Twistel

Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

Auditory and Audiovisual Time-To-Collision Estimation and Road Crossing Judgements

Daniel Oberfeld-Twistel received a B.Sc. and an M.Sc. in psychology from the University of Bremen, and a Ph. D. in psychology from Technische Universität Berlin. He is an associate Professor of Experimental Psychology at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz. His background is in auditory and visual perception and cognition. His current research focuses on the role of auditory perception for mobility and the development of observer models for time-to-collision estimation and road crossing judgments. For this research, he uses an innovative virtual reality system that combines state-of-the-art acoustic simulations of traffic scenarios with visual VR simulations, and advanced psychophysical methods. Recent projects have studied the effect of vehicle sound level on auditory and audiovisual time-to-collision estimation, the importance of auditory information when pedestrians interact with accelerating vehicles, and differences in pedestrians’ interaction with conventional and electric vehicles.

Eli Peli

Harvard Medical School & Tufts University

Pedestrian Collisions with Visual Field Loss

Dr. Peli is a Professor of Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School, Adjunct Professor of Ophthalmology, and the director of the Vision Rehabilitation Service at Tufts University School of Medicine. Dr. Peli is a Fellow of the American Academy of Optometry, a Fellow of the Optical Society of America, a Fellow of the SID (Society for Information Display), a Fellow of the SPIE (The International Society of Optical Engineering) and a Fellow of ARVO. Dr. Peli's principal research interests are image processing in relation to visual function and clinical psychophysics in low vision rehabilitation, image understanding and evaluation of display-vision interaction. He also maintains an interest in oculomotor control and binocular vision. Dr. Peli is a consultant to many companies in the ophthalmic instrumentation area and to manufacturers of head mounted displays (HMDs). Dr. Peli has published more than 240 peer reviewed scientific papers and has been awarded 21 US Patents.

John-Ross Rizzo

NYU Langone Medical Center

Assistive Tech 2.0: Smart Services Systems of the Future

John-Ross (JR) Rizzo, M.D., M.S.C.I., is a physician-scientist at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. He is the Vice Chair of Innovation and Equity in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation with cross-appointments in the Department of Neurology and the Departments of Biomedical & Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the NYU-Tandon School of Engineering. He is also the Associate Director of Healthcare for the NYU Wireless Center, a joint academic-industry collaborative in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at NYU-Tandon. He leads the Visuomotor Integration Laboratory (VMIL), focused on neurorehabilitation, and the REACTIV Laboratory (Rehabilitation Engineering Alliance and Center Transforming Low Vision), focused on assistive technologies and health equity. Inclusive design is near and dear to his heart and all scholastic efforts reflect his own personal experiences with vision loss.

Barry H. Stafford

Leader Dogs for the Blind

Orientation and Mobility for Independent Travel

Barry H. Stafford is a Certified Orientation and Mobility Specialist at Leader Dogs for the Blind. He attended Stephen F. Austin State University (SFASU) where he graduated with his Bachelor of Science in Orientation and Mobility in 1991. He has an M.Ed. in Special Education, also from SFASU. He has worked as a Mobility Specialist in public schools, private rehabilitation centers, the VA Hospital, and in the Teacher Preparation program at SFASU.

Preeti Verghese

Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute

Training Eye Movements for Visual Search in Maculopathy

Preeti Verghese is a Senior Scientist at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, San Francisco. She has an undergraduate degree in engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, a PhD in Neuroscience from Syracuse University and did postdoctoral training at Harvard and NASA Ames. She is a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, was the President of the Vision Sciences Society, sits on the Editorial Board of Vision Research and the Journal of Vision, and is a standing member of the study section on Neuroscience of Basic Visual Processes. The research in her lab aims to understand the mechanisms of normal vision and action, and how vision loss impacts visual guidance of action in the real world. Her current research includes studying residual motion and depth perception in individuals with central field loss as well as adaptations for eye movements in this population.

Charles C. Wykoff

Retina Consultants of Texas

Age-Related Macular Degeneration: Past, Present and Future

Charles C. Wykoff, MD, PhD is Director of Research, Retina Consultants of Texas and Ophthalmology Deputy Chair, Blanton Eye Institute, Houston Methodist Hospital. He received his baccalaureate from MIT, PhD from Oxford and MD from Harvard. He is passionate about translational research, clinical trial design, accelerating drug-development programs and has published over 200 peer-reviewed manuscripts. He serves on multiple scientific and medical advisory boards, safety monitoring committees, and global steering committees for endeavors spanning the innovative process from early to late-stage developments. He is President of the Vit-Buckle Society, serves on the ASRS Board of Directors, is a founding member of the Ophthalmology Retina Editorial Board, and is the Chief Medical Editor for Retina Specialist. He has been awarded multiple Achievement, Honor and Senior Honor Awards. His guiding philosophy is to build and strengthen innovative, ethical teams focused on developing new approaches to improving outcomes for blinding diseases.