OVERVIEW

The fourth annual Fall Vision Meeting (FVM) is sponsored by the Center for Visual Science at the University of Rochester. The meeting will be held at the University of Rochester Medical Center on October 15, 16, and 17, 2004. This year's meeting promises to be a special one, as we celebrate the return of the Optical Society of America to its birthplace. Rochester, located near Lake Ontario in western New York, is an internationally recognized center for visual and imaging science and provides a scenic and natural setting for a variety of outdoor activities. The FVM will immediately follow the Annual Meeting of the Optical Society of America. Meeting details can be found at http://www.osavisionmeeting.org/. As in past years, the Optical Society of America will offer a one-day "free pass" to all OSA members who are pre-registered for the FVM by 09/19 to attend the Frontier in Optics (FiO) and Color Technical sessions on Thursday, October 14. The rates for non-OSA members can be found on the OSA Annual Meeting registration page. Visit http://www.osa.org/join/ for information on becoming an OSA member.

The local organizing committee is chaired by David Williams, University of Rochester, and the program committee is chaired by Mike Webster, University of Nevada, Reno.

The Fall Vision Meeting is a low cost, high quality meeting designed to focus discussion on key issues in vision science. The registration fee of $125 will be optional for all participants, including invited speakers. We hope that those of you who have funding to cover the registration fee will indeed do so, to ensure that others, to whom cost would be prohibitive, can attend the meeting. Click here to see the breakdown of expenses that the registration fee covers.

The main strength of the FVM is its small size, which allows for engaging scientific discussion among colleagues. Another advantage of this format is that there will be no parallel sessions, allowing every participant to attend all of the talks they want to hear. The meeting is organized around 9 workshops, each with 4-5 speakers and a format designed to promote active discussion of key issues in vision science. Each workshop will end with 30-40 minutes of general discussion of the issues presented. There will be some limited time available for contributed talks in the color and vision sessions, each containing 5-6 platform presentations. In addition, we would like to encourage all registrants to submit a poster presentation to the meeting. We are especially interested in abstract submissions that relate to the workshop topics or address one of the topics listed below. Submissions on unrelated topics in vision science are also welcome.

Some topics on which we encourage abstract submissions include (but are not limited to):

  • Infant Vision
  • Emmetropization/Myopia
  • Cortical Mechanisms of Color
  • Comparative Color Vision
  • Aging and Vision
  • Noninvasive Assessment of the Visual System
  • Retinal Circuitry for Color Vision/Opponency
  • Spatial Vision
  • Retinal Disease
  • Rod Inputs to Vision
  • Visual Transduction
  • Photoreceptive Ganglion Cells
  • Laser Refractive Surgery
  • Low Vision
  • Adaptation of the Visual System to the Environment
  • Visual Development

All of the abstracts accepted for this year's meeting (including the invited ones) will be published in the online Journal of Vision.

This year's FVM will celebrate the 2004 recipient of the Tillyer Award. The Tillyer Award was established in 1953 through an endowment from the American Optical Co. It is presented not more than once every two years to a person who has performed distinguished work in the field of vision, including (but not limited to) the optics, physiology, anatomy, or psychology of the visual system. Past winners include: George Sperling (2002), John D. Mollon (2000), David R. Williams (1998), John G. Robson (1996), Jacob Nachmias (1994), Horace B. Barlow (1992), Vivianne C. Smith & Joel Pokorny (1990), Russell L. De Valois (1988). This year's Tillyer award winner is John Krauskopf.

The Young Investigator Award is an OSA tradition and will be awarded to the student or postdoc who gives the best presentation at the meeting. Poster and paper presentations will be considered equally and invited speakers are not eligible. The winner of the award will receive a cash prize of $150, and thanks to the generosity of the MIT Press, a copy of the 2-volume set The Visual Neurosciences. Past winners are Xu Cheng (2003), Jun Yan (2001), Heidi Hofer (2000), and Gokhan Malkoc (1999). This year's winner of the Young Investigator Award is Jennifer Williams.

The exhibitors at the 2004 Fall Vision Meeting were:

  • Applied Science Laboratories, Bedford MA, USA
  • Arrington Research Inc., Scottsdale AZ, USA
  • Cambridge Research Systems, Ltd., Rochester Kent, United Kingdom
  • NovaVision, Boca Raton FL, USA

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