The ALIVE laboratory team includes a team of researchers from our College of Health and Life Sciences at Aston.
Director of ALIVE (CVHR: The Centre for Vision and Hearing Research)
Tim Meese, Department of Optometry, College of Health and Life Sciences
t.s.meese@aston.ac.uk
Tim is a psychophysicist and computational modeler, with long-standing interests in spatial vision, contrast gain control, binocular vision, and depth perception. More generally, from an information processing point of view, he is interested in where the privileges of perceptual access lie. (i.e. what parts of the information processing stream are available to conscious perceptual decision making, and what parts remain hidden from us?). More recently, Tim also became interested in the interface between visual perception (the stage) and social perception (the players on that stage), known as social vision. Current projects include size constancy in the CAVE, detection of depth cues in the CAVE and size discrimination in the CAVE.
Co-Director of ALIVE
Klaus Kessler, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, College of Health and Life Sciences
k.kessler@aston.ac.uk
Klaus is the Deputy Director of ALIVE (responsible for HMDs, driving simulator, and electrophysiological equipment). His research interests include: Neural correlates of embodiment, social cognition, executive functions and memory in VR, ageing. Platforms and equipment: Oculus Rift + Touch (HMD), CAVE, Driving Simulator, eego sports (mobile EEG), Starstim (mobile tES), Virtualizer (omnidirectional treadmill), perception-neuron (mocap).
Meet our lab members and collaborators:
Joanna Lumsden, Reader & Director of the Aston Interactive Media (AIM) Lab, Department of Computer Science, College of Engineering and Physical Sciences
j.lumsden@aston.ac.uk
Joanna is one of the founding Principal Investigators of the ALIVE facility. Her interests lie in using the ALIVE resources to both facilitate and evaluate human interaction with technology, particularly mobile technology.
Stuart Wallis, Research Fellow, College of Health and Life Sciences
s.a.wallis2@aston.ac.uk
Stuart is a psychophysicist with a background in optometry. He is primarily responsible for the virtual reality ‘CAVE’. Tim is interested in visual perception within VR and the simulation of visual problems (such as macular degeneration).
James S. Wolffsohn, Professor of Optometry, Biomedical Engineering Subject Lead, and Associate Pro-Vice Chancellor, College of Health and Life Sciences j.s.w.wolffsohn@aston.ac.uk
James research interests are in the effect of ophthalmic medical devices such as contact lenses and intraocular lenses on mobility and driving.
Stephen J Anderson, Chair of Optometry and Visual Neuroscience, College of Health and Life Sciences
s.j.anderson@aston.ac.uk
Stephen is a background in optometry and experimental psychology/visual perception. His research brings expertise in the fundamentals of visual perception to clinical and applied projects such as work on myopia.
Ulysses Bernardet, Lecturer in Computer Science, College of Engineering and Physical Science
u.bernardet@aston.ac.uk
Ulysses has a background in psychology, computer science, and neurobiology. His R&D comprises three main areas: Designing real-time interactive virtual human systems; empirical research on human cognition and human-machine interaction; and developing open-source tools for teaching and research.
Hongfang Wang, Research Fellow, Aston Brain Centre (ABC) and Aston Laboratory for Immersive Virual Environments (ALIVE) and Psychology Department, College of Health and Life Sciences
h.wang26@aston.ac.uk
Hongfang research interests include brain network dynamics study in healthy and patients using graph theory and statistical learning techniques, and with the aid of MEG (magnetoencephalography), EEG, and virtual reality equipments.
Antonio Fratini, Senior Lecturer, Biomedical Engineering, College of Health and Life Sciences.
a.fratini@aston.ac.uk
Antonio has a background in electronics and biomedical engineering. His research activities fit in the fields of biomedical data processing and medical instrumentation. Antonio has been mainly devoted to the study of musculoskeletal and cardiovascular systems and the analysis of physiological states in healthy, injured or diseased subjects.
Panagiotis Petridis, Senior Lecturer, Gamification, Aston Business School, Aston University, p.petridis@aston.ac.uk
Panagiotis has spent his entire career working in the field of virtual reality, simulation and gaming; something which he enjoys as a hobby as much as a vocation. His interest is in how these technologies can be used to change people’s behaviours, to help them make decisions and learn about things through realistic simulated experiences. Panagiotis holds a PhD in Computer Graphics from Sussex University titled “Interactions in Digital Heritage Systems".
Dr Andrew Schofield Reader in Psychology
a.schofield@aston.ac.uk
Andrew has been working in the field of Visual Perception for nearly 30 years but have always combined this with a strong interest in Computer Vision and Machine Learning including Neural Networks.
