World-renowned vision scientist Patrick Cavanagh has joined Glendon College as a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Psychology.
Patrick Cavanagh
A leading scholar on vision research, Cavanagh pioneered new directions in the area of spatial and temporal resolution of visual attention. He discovered a distorted perception of position caused by movement and presented a new theory of position perception based in the cortical and subcortical areas of attention and eye movement control. His groundbreaking discoveries have been supported by numerous grants from research councils in Europe, the U.S. and Canada.
“We are delighted that Patrick will be joining our program,” said Professor Tim Moore, chair of the Department of Psychology at Glendon. “He brings a wealth of experience and expertise that will inspire our students and invigorate the department’s research agenda.”
Cavanagh has also opened new research that uses the properties of art to reveal the functioning of the visual brain. He discovered that errors that go unnoticed in paintings (or Photoshop manipulations) are evidence of the subset of rules that the visual system uses to interpret images. These discrepancies between art and the scene it represents inform us about about the brain within us as much as about the world outside us.
“I am very excited to join Glendon College with its focus on culture and science and its beautiful campus,” said Cavanagh. “I also look forward to collaborating with the outstanding scientists at the Centre for Vision Sciences, a world leader in vision research.”
A Distinguished Research Professor at Dartmouth College, a professor emeritus at Harvard University and at the Université Paris Descartes, Cavanagh hails from Oakville, Ont., although he grew up in Montreal. He has a BEng from McGill University, and holds an MSc and a PhD in psychology from Carnegie-Mellon University. He has worked on memory and vision research since 1972, beginning at the Université de Montréal where he created the Laboratory of Perception. He went on to co-found the Vision Sciences Laboratory at Harvard University and later created the Centre of Attention & Vision at the Université Paris Descartes.
Cavanagh joined Glendon’s Department of Psychology on July 1.
This position is the result of collaboration with the following offices, research groups and Faculties at York University: the Office of the Vice-President Academic & Provost, the VISTA research group, the Faculty of Health, the Lassonde School of Engineering and the Centre for Vision Sciences.