[visionlist] Vision scientists and / or skilled and experienced technical personnel needed - City University, London

[Wade, Simona]

Background:
The Applied Vision Research Centre (AVRC) at City University London was established in 1987 to promote the development of non-invasive methods for investigating fundamental aspects of human vision with emphasis on clinical and industrial applications. The Centre is in the School of Community and Health Sciences and is based in the Department of Optometry & Visual Science. Research areas cover topics concerned with fundamental visual processes, ophthalmic and physiological optics, lighting and mesopic vision, vision care and clinical practice, visual neuroscience and the development of specialised instrumentation for visual psychophysics and for the measurement of non-invasive, objective responses with emphasis on clinical applications.

A number of recent AVRC studies examined various aspects of mesopic vision and new tests have been designed to measure changes in visual performance as a function of both the spectral composition and the amount of ambient illumination. Largely as a result of these initial studies, a new field of performance based photometry has now received international acceptance.  In spite of this progress, much remains to be done in order to understand how to optimise visual performance in the mesopic range.

The aim of this project is to produce a dynamic model of mesopic vision that can be applied within specified environments such as the lighting of residential streets. The project involves a multidisciplinary team of vision scientists and lighting engineers and has the potential to improve lighting design for street users whilst consuming less energy. The effects scattered light and glare can have on visual performance will also be examined in related studies and methods of minimising glare will be developed. Two postdoctoral positions, initially each for two years, are available from January, 2011 at the Applied Vision Research Centre, City University London.

Two additional postgraduate research students will also join the mesopic vision and lighting team in October 2011.The work is funded by EPSRC and involves mesopic vision, scattered light, and street lighting related studies which will be carried out at UCL and Sheffield by other members of the team.

Responsibilities:
The successful applicants will work with the scientist in charge and will interact with research students and other technical personnel. The work will involve the contruction and calibration of equipment, design of  and execution of experiments, some programming and data analysis and interpretation, development of models and the writing of research publications.

New technologies will be investigated and novel laboratory tests will be set up to determine how the spectral composition and the amount of light available affect pupil size, perceived glare and visual performance over a range of light levels that encompass the mesopic range. Design conditions suitable for certain environments such as residential streets will be interpolated from these data to provide dynamic predictions of the optimum parameters that yield the best visual performance for any given amount of available radiant flux.

The overall aim of these studies is to provide better understanding of mesopic vision and to quantify the effects of selective attention and dynamic glare in the mesopic range with the aim of optimizing lighting in residential streets.

Person specification:
Grade 7 Salary Scale Appointments

We seek highly motivated researchers with relevant training and experience in vision science and / or experienced technicians with skills in optics, photometry or radiometry. The successful applicants will join a team of researchers working on colour vision, glare, attention and vision, parallel pressing, binocular summation, mesopic vision and early detection of retinal and optic nerve disease using advanced vision and optometric tests. We will consider applicants with a PhD or / and relevant technical experience / skills in vision research, optics instrumentation for vision research, optometric research, illumination engineering, or visual psychophysics.

If you are interested and wish to discuss any technical aspects of the proposed investigations, please contact John Barbur:
J.L.Barbur at city.ac.uk
Tel. +44 (0)20 70408357

Closing date: 30th November 2010

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://visionscience.com/pipermail/visionlist/attachments/20101026/03b07996/attachment.htm>