STAFF PROFILE
Associate Professor Adrian Dyer
Adrian Dyer is an associate professor at the School of Media and Communication.
Adrian Dyer is a vision scientist and photographer seeking to understand how the representation of an image is created, and can be used to interpret the complex world in which we live. Research interests centre on understanding how visual systems learn perceptually difficult tasks. This work involves both using human psychophysics and imaging studies, as well as experimenting with how the miniature brain of a bee can form visual representations to make decisions in complex environments.
Research
Research interests
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Colour vision
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Eye movements
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Face recognition
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Visual ecology and plant-pollinator interactions
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Invisible spectrum imaging
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High speed imaging
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Information processing in insect brains
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Forensic imaging
Major grants
Colour visual processing by honeybees: solutions for decision making in complex environments (DP0878968) is a collaboration with Professor Marcello Rosa.
Project summary: Honeybees are a cost and time efficient animal model for testing how information is processed in a miniature brain containing less than 0.01% of the number of cells found in a human brain. Bees use their ultraviolet, blue and green colour vision to efficiently find flowers in complex environments. This project investigates how colour information is processed by bees, and develops computer models to evaluate how novel solutions might be applicable for robotic vision. The model also allows for testing of how environmental factors, like changes in climate, might affect the way in which bees choose to visit certain flower types, including plants that have important environmental and economic impacts.
Organization and plasticity of visual processing in a miniature brain (DP0987989) is a collaboration with Dr David Reser.
Project summary: To recognise objects a brain must have an internal representation of most likely object appearance. Two ways in which brains may posses this information include a hard wired template system, and/or the neuroplasticity to learn novel objects. Recent investigations on honeybee vision show that this animal can learn to recognise very difficult objects, although currently we do not know how the miniaturised bee brain manages these tasks. This project will reveal changes that occur in the processing of visual objects by the bee’s brain with increasing experience, with potential applications including robotics or building interfaces between sensors and biological systems.
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Grad Cert. IT (Software Development) Swinburne University, 2004
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PhD (Visual Sciences) RMIT University, 2000
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B App Sci (Photography) RMIT University, 1988
Professional interests
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Currently QEII Research Fellow
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2007–2010 ARC Research Fellow at Monash University (Physiology Department)
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2004/2007/2009 Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at Johannes Gutenberg University (Mainz; Germany).
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2005–2006 Research Associate at Cambridge University (UK).
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2003–2004 Research Fellow at La Trobe University.
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2002 Alexander von Humboldt Fellow Julius-Maximilians-University (Wuerzburg; Germany).
Editorial boards
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PLoS One Academic Editor
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Journal of Pollination Ecology
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Faculty of 1000 (Biology)
- Basist, G.,Dyer, A.,Garcia Mendoza, J.,Raleigh, R.,Lawrie, A. (2021). Why Variation in Flower Color May Help Reproductive Success in the Endangered Australian Orchid Caladenia fulva In: Frontiers in Plant Science, 12, 1 - 18
- Nguyen, A.,Dyer, A.,Garcia Mendoza, J.,Andrews, S. (2021). BeeScapes In: BeeScapes Melbourne, Australia
- McFarlane, S.,Garcia Mendoza, J.,Verhagen, D.,Dyer, A. (2020). Alarm tones, music and their elements: Analysis of reported waking sounds to counteract sleep inertia In: PLoS ONE, 15, 1 - 32
- ElQadi, M.,Lesiv, M.,Dyer, A.,Dorin, A. (2020). Computer vision-enhanced selection of geo-tagged photos on social network sites for land cover classification In: Environmental Modelling and Software, 128, 1 - 7
- McFarlane, S.,Garcia Mendoza, J.,Verhagen, D.,Dyer, A. (2020). Auditory Countermeasures for Sleep Inertia: Exploring the Effect of Melody and Rhythm in an Ecological Context In: Clocks & Sleep, 2, 208 - 224
- Garcia Mendoza, J.,Shrestha, M.,Ospina-Rozo, L.,Dekiwadia, C.,Field, M.,Ma, J.,Tran, N.,Dyer, A.,Fox, K.,Greentree, A. (2020). Iridescence and hydrophobicity have no clear delineation that explains flower petal micro-surface In: Scientific Reports, 10, 1 - 10
- McFarlane, S.,Garcia Mendoza, J.,Verhagen, D.,Dyer, A. (2020). Alarm Tones, Voice Warnings, and Musical Treatments: A Systematic Review of Auditory Countermeasures for Sleep Inertia in Abrupt and Casual Awakenings In: Clocks & Sleep, 2, 416 - 433
- Garcia Mendoza, J.,Phillips, R.,Peter, C.,Dyer, A. (2020). Changing How Biologists View Flowers—Color as a Perception Not a Trait In: Frontiers in Plant Science, 11, 1 - 15
- Howard, S.,Avargues-Weber, A.,Garcia Mendoza, J.,Greentree, A.,Dyer, A. (2019). Surpassing the subitizing threshold: appetitive-aversive conditioning improves discrimination of numerosities in honeybees In: The Journal of experimental biology, 222, 1 - 2
- Howard, S.,Avargues-Weber, A.,Garcia Mendoza, J.,Greentree, A.,Dyer, A. (2019). Achieving arithmetic learning in honeybees and examining how individuals learn In: Communicative and Integrative Biology, 12, 166 - 170
- BeeScapes (Part B). Funded by: Creative Victoria, VicArts Grant from (2020 to 2021)
- Beescapes (Part A). Funded by: City of Melbourne Arts Grant from (2020 to 2021)
- Designing green spaces for biodiversity and human well-being. Funded by: ARC Linkage Grant 2016 from (2017 to 2021)
- A World Without Bees: simulating important agricultural insect pollinators (Administered by Monash University). Funded by: ARC Discovery Projects via other University Grant 2016 from (2016 to 2021)
- Pollination; an ecosystem service affected by climate change. Administered by University of Oslo. Funded by: Research Council of Norway - Grant from (2014 to 2017)
1 PhD Current Supervisions2 PhD Completions