• Question: do you believe that you can change the future of people's vision by your work?

    Asked by to Andrew, Elaine, Emma, Michael, Nancy on 17 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Nancy Carlisle

      Nancy Carlisle answered on 17 Jun 2014:

      I’m not sure about ‘changing the future of people’s vision’, but I do think my work on attention is important for understanding how we should treat vision as a society. Let me give an example: GOOGLE GLASSES. They are cool, right? You can see a computer while you are walking around! The problem is that we actually have limited attentional resources. So it’s likely that people wearing Google glasses would be more likely to get into an accident (just like how people who walk while texting can run into others or have more serious accidents).
      Understanding the limits of our attentional system is important for making sure we are all safe!
      🙂

    • Photo: Michael Kelly

      Michael Kelly answered on 17 Jun 2014:

      I think my area of research will have a large impact on the vision of people as they get older. I am developing a method of measuring changes due to aging in the eye.
      One of the problems of treating these condition is that we have to wait for a disease to be quite advanced before we can compare the effects of treatment to those people who haven’t had the treatment. I believe my research should be sensitive to age changes sooner and so we will be able to say sooner whether a treatment is effective.

    • Photo: Andrew French

      Andrew French answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      I develop ways for computers to get information out of an image. For example, we have to come up with computer programs which can spot, for example, faces in an image.
      Sometimes, by working out how to ‘teach’ a computer to do these things, we may come across a possible biological mechansim (ie. a possible way we might ACTUALLY do these things, with our brain and eyes.)
      This way, by trying to solve a problem with a computer, we may learn something about how we as humans solve the same problem.

      So you never know, as a side affect of my research someone may be able to figure out something new about how the brain interprets our vision. And by undestanding the process, we can help to understand why sometimes things don’t work as they should, and maybe fix the problem.

    • Photo: Emma Reid

      Emma Reid answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      Hi there!
      My work is focused on stopping people from going blind by repairing damaged blood vessels before it has a major impact on vision. Prevention of blindness is much better than cure! Hopefully the work that myself and other researchers are doing will have some impact and help to maintain or restore vision. Even if it helps just one person see better then it’s been worthwhile. 🙂
      Emma

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