Annual meeting of the Vision Sciences Society

The Vision Sciences Society is a nonprofit, membership organization of nearly 3000 scientists interested in functional aspects of vision, about 2000 of whom attend its annual May meeting. VSS was founded in 2001 to bring together scientists from a broad range of basic, translational and clinical disciplines, including visual psychophysics, visual neuroscience, computational vision and visual cognition. The scientific content of VSS meetings reflects the breadth of topics and interconnected ideas and approaches in modern vision science, from visual coding to perception, recognition and the visual control of action, recent developments in cognitive psychology, computer vision and neuroimaging. Since its founding, VSS has provided a forum for communicating advances in vision science, and has become a flagship conference for the field. The interdisciplinary nature of VSS is reflected in the membership of its Board of Directors and Abstract Review Committee. Many faculty from US institutions who attend VSS are principal investigators on NIH (mostly NEI) grants; the research objectives of the programs of NIH and NEI are well-represented in the program and individual presentations. Over 65% of participants are predoctoral and postdoctoral trainees. Of these, 55% are US citizens. VSS provides them career development opportunities via: (1) platform and poster presentations that serve as a forum for trainees to showcase their work and receive feedback, (2) career-development workshops that cover topics such as “Strategies for Funding your Research Ideas Around the Globe”, “Career Transitions”, “The Public Face of your Science”, “Careers in Industry and Government”, “Faculty Careers at Primarily Undergraduate Institutions”, and include panel discussions with journal editors, NIH and NSF program officers, as well as academic and industry representatives, and (3) a “Meet the Professors” event, where small groups of trainees meet with members of the VSS Board and other professors for free-wheeling, open-ended discussions. VSS provides formal and informal opportunities for networking with peers and senior colleagues in a comfortable, engaging setting. The large contingent of early-stage investigators at VSS is a sign of the strong health of the field and the opportunity VSS provides for advancing the field. Our goal is to facilitate access and participation for the next generation of vision scientists. VSS received a one-year R13 award for its 2019 meeting, followed by a 3-year renewal to support the 2022-2024 meetings. Based on the success and positive impact of these awards, the purpose of the current 5-year proposal is to provide 84 travel awards per year for trainees (undergraduates, graduate students and postdocs) to attend the 2025-2029 meetings. Our goal is to attract and support a wide, strong pool of trainees, who demonstrate potential for future success as vision researchers, and whose research findings are presented at the meeting. Funds are also requested to offset registration costs for all undergraduate attendees to significantly expand access and participation at the conference for students at their first encounter of the field of vision science.