The Systems Vision Science Summer School & Symposium, August 11 – 22, 2025, Tuebingen, Germany
The 3rd edition since 2023
What is systems vision science?
Systems vision science combines computational, behavioral, and neuroscience methods to discover functions and algorithms for vision in various brain regions and their implementations in neural circuits.
Target audience
This summer school should be helpful to experimental vision researchers for learning computational methods, vision theorists and modellers for closer links with experimental data, physicists, engineers, and computer vision researchers for learning about biological vision, and, more generally, vision scientists interested in topics and approaches in systems vision science.
Invited Lecturers and Speakers
| Marco Bertamini, Visual Perception Lab, University of Padova, Italy
David Brainard, Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, USA Peter Dayan, Department of Computational Neuroscience, Max-Planck-Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Germany Andrea van Doorn, Utrecht University, Netherlands Roland Fleming, Department of Psychology, Giessen University, Germany Pascal Fries, Research Group Neurodynamics, Max-Planck-Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Germany Wilson S Geisler, Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin , USA Robbe Goris, Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin , USA |
Sheng He, State Key Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Science, Institute of Biophysics, CAS, China
Tadashi Isa, Department of Neuroscience at the Graduate School of Medicine at the Kyoto University, Japan Tomas Knapen, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam & Spinoza Centre for Neuroimaging, NIN Amsterdam, Netherlands Jan Koenderink, Utrecht University, Netherlands Larry Maloney, Psychology and Neural Science at New York University, USA Keith May, Department of Psychology, University of Essex, UK Marcello Rosa, Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute, Monash University, Australia Jonathan Victor, Division of Systems Neurology and Neuroscience in the Brain and Mind Research Institute, Weill Cornell Medical College, USA |
Style and content
Unlike a typical summer school which combines multiple tutorials or pedagogical seminars, this summer school is like a graduate school course with a more coherently structured syllabus. The syllabus expands upon the content of a textbook “Understanding vision: theory, models, and data” published by Oxford University Press 2014. The course will be taught by a team of local and international lecturers. Click here for 2023 and here for 2024 edition of this SVS summer school.
A typical day in the summer school contains lectures, guided exercise, quiz, and discussion sessions, interspersed by break time for lunch, dinner, and coffee/tea, etc for social interactions. Students are encouraged to bring their research project posters to the school for viewing and presentation during these break time exchanges as well as some special sessions devoted to student presentations — the posters will be available for viewing throughout the summer school. In exercise/discussion sessions, students can apply theoretically gained knowledge and can have opportunities for one-to-one tutorials with summer school lecturers and teaching assistants. Discussion sessions will also encourage interactions by including discussions on, e.g., controversial research issues, historical retrospectives, differences/relationship between disciplines, and relationship between theories and data.
The summer school will end with a symposium on frontier topics in systems vision science, with talks and posters by additional speakers and symposium participants. The summer school students will be invited to the symposium as participants, and are welcome to submit contributions to the symposium.
Concept of the summer school
- A coherent graduate-course syllabus in a summer school format
- Data, models, and theory — what, how, and why
- Content and approaches presented by and discussed with world leading experts in vision science
- Supervised exercises help to practice the theoretical knowledge
- Poster and presentation sessions of your work and interests
- Social interactions and networking while you enjoy science
- A symposium on frontier topics to intensify and extend the knowledge gained during the classes
Aim and motivation
This summer school aims to promote a systems level approach of understanding how vision works by combining neural and behavioral data with theories and models. This is motivated by a recognition that fresh research progress increasingly requires this approach, and that both new ideas and new experimental technology can help to strengthen the tradition of scientific rigor.