IAS Fellow at Grey College, Durham University (January – March 2011)
IAS Fellow at Grey College, Durham University (January – March 2011)Martin S. Banks is a Professor of Optometry, Vision Science, Psychology, and Neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley. He received his Bachelor’s degree in 1970 from Occidental College in Los Angeles where he majored in psychology and minored in physics. He spent a year after that in Germany as a school teacher. He then entered graduate school at the University of California, San Diego where he received a Master’s degree in experimental psychology in 1973. He entered the graduate program at the University of Minnesota where he received a PhD. in developmental psychology in 1976. He was Assistant and Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin before he moved to Berkeley in 1985.
Professor Banks is known for his research on human visual perception, particularly the perception of depth and for his research on the integration of cues from different sensory organs. He was involved in the development of novel stereo displays that present nearly correct focus cues and other stereo displays that bypass the optics of the human eye.
Professor Banks is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Fellow of the American Psychological Society, Fellow of the Center for the Advanced Study of the Behavioral Sciences, recipient of the McCandless Award for Early Scientific Contribution, recipient of the Gottsdanker and Howard lectureships, the first recipient of the Koffka Award for Contribution in Perception and Development, and an Honorary Professor of the University of Wales, Cardiff.
Whilst at the IAS Professor Banks will be working with a variety of colleagues at Durham on the further development of fast switchable lens technology, examining how the visual system perceives lighting and surface material, and exploring uses of display technology.