Eugene Surowitz Assistant Professor of Psychology Ed Vessel, director of the Visual NeuroAesthetics (VisNA) Lab at City College, has been awarded an Osher Fellowship from the California Academy of Sciences. The fellowship will support a collaborative project with a colleague at UCSF and the Creative Director of the Academy.
With funding to support research through the summer and fall, Dr. Vessel’s lab will apply computational image analysis techniques — specifically, deep neural network (DNN) measures of “uniqueness” — to photographs submitted to the Academy’s Big Picture competition, which aims to inspire climate action through compelling conservation photography. The project will explore whether these computational measures correlate with winning images and their potential to influence people’s beliefs and behaviors around nature conservation.
The Osher Fellows program attracts academics from the fields of science, art, design, and policy.
Working in collaboration with the Academy’s scientists, educators, and science communicators, Osher Fellows bring their creative expertise to the California Academy of Sciences’ innovative public engagement and science learning programs and share their work through creative and impactful storytelling for a global audience.
Learn more about the Osher Fellows program and the Big Picture competition.
