Annual meeting of the Vision Sciences Society: Travel grants for junior investigators

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PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT The Vision Sciences Society is a nonprofit membership organization of nearly 2000 scientists interested in the functional aspects of vision. VSS was founded in 2001 with the purpose of bringing together scientists from a broad range of disciplines including visual psychophysics, visual neuroscience, computational vision and visual cognition. The scientific content of the 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, as well as recent developments in cognitive psychology, computer vision and neuroimaging. Since its founding, VSS has provided a forum and framework for communicating advances in vision science, and VSS has become a flagship conference for the field. The interdisciplinary nature of VSS is reflected in the deliberately diverse membership of the Board of Directors and Abstract Review Committee, and by its formal relationship with the more clinically-oriented Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology. Many of the faculty from institutions in the United States who attend VSS are principal investigators of National Eye Institute grants; hence, the research objectives of the programs of the National Institutes of Health and of the National Eye Institute are well-represented in the program planning and individual presentations. Over 60% of participants are predoctoral and postdoctoral trainees. Of these 55% are US citizens. VSS provides multiple career development opportunities: (1) the platform and poster presentations provide a forum for trainees to showcase their work and receive feedback, (2) career-development workshops cover topics such as “Getting that Faculty Job”, “Reviewing and Responding to Reviews”, “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 grant officers, and academic and industry representatives, (3) a “Meet the Professors” event in which trainees meet in small groups with members of the VSS Board and other professors for free-wheeling, open-ended discussions, and (4), a partnership with ARVO through which trainees from one society can carry out research or attend the meeting of the other. Informally, VSS provides opportunities for networking with peers and senior colleagues in a comfortable and 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 this next generation of vision scientists. The purpose of this grant is to provide 35 travel awards (5 for ARVO affiliates) for early-career investigators to attend the 2019 meeting, with the focus on attracting and supporting a diverse pool of pre- doctoral students, postdoctoral trainees, and pre-tenure faculty who demonstrate potential for future success as vision researchers and whose research findings will be presented at the meeting. Funds are also requested to support childcare services for awardees and workshops and social events for all early-career participants.