Tom Troscianko Award

At the age of 58, Tom Troscianko died in his sleep during the night of 15th November 2011. He was Professor of Psychology in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Bristol and one of the chief editors of the journals Perception and i-Perception. He was a stalwart of the AVA, serving as their secretary on the executive committee since 2003. His initial research interests were in colour vision but these rapidly extended to natural images in general and at the time of his death he was developing them further to the perception of movies. Tom was well known throughout the vision community, particularly in Europe, where his passion for science, travel and companionship merged into one unbounded adventure. A full obituary was published in the journal Perception, and can be found here.

Over a period of thirty years or more, Tom Troscianko became known to the vision community for many things including his firm support for the conference that he loved: the European Conference on Visual Perception (ECVP). For Tom, the opportunity for making connections between people and science was not limited to the scheduled events of this meeting but also the travelling on either side. These trips were often elaborate and indirect involving several forms of transport and criss-crossing paths across land and water that introduced him to new countries, people and surroundings. It was Tom’s wish that he might do something to encourage young scientists to approach life with the same spirit of adventure and expedition. Following his untimely death in 2011 a legacy was left to the AVA to support vision science in the best way that the committee saw fit.

To celebrate Tom’s contribution to the field of vision science, and to reflect his wide interests, the Tom Troscianko Award funds attendance at ECVP while encouraging innovative science and interesting travel. The AVA will normally award up to £1000 towards this but will seek a supplementary contribution from ECVP on an ad hoc basis each year by agreement with the meeting organizers.

Applications are welcome from early career scientists undertaking a PhD or with a maximum of 5 year post-PhD experience. To be eligible for an award the applicant must visit at least one location, in addition to that of the intended ECVP meeting. The additional activities can be for purposes of the candidate's choosing but they should be of a scientific nature. The additional visit(s) may be to any location, and would normally occur either immediately before, or after, the conference, or both. If the proposal requires unusual access to facilities (including laboratory visits) a letter of agreement from the custodian / lab leader must be attached to the application. Award holders will be asked to present a report about their visit at the ECVP business meeting and to supply a short written report to be displayed on the AVA’s website.

The next deadline for application is 2nd April 2013. Please apply using form found here and return it to secretary@theava.net.