Associate Professor Adrian Dyer

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.

Publications (Google Scholar)

Research

Research interests

• Colour vision

• Eye movements

• Face recognition

• Visual ecology and plant-pollinator interactions

• Invisible spectrum imaging

• High speed imaging

• Information processing in insect brains

• 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. 

• Grad Cert. IT (Software Development) Swinburne University, 2004

• PhD (Visual Sciences) RMIT University, 2000

• B App Sci (Photography) RMIT University, 1988

Professional interests

• Currently QEII Research Fellow

• 2007–2010   ARC Research Fellow at Monash University (Physiology Department)

• 2004/2007/2009   Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at Johannes Gutenberg University (Mainz; Germany).

• 2005–2006   Research Associate at Cambridge University (UK).

• 2003–2004   Research Fellow at La Trobe University.

• 2002   Alexander von Humboldt Fellow Julius-Maximilians-University (Wuerzburg; Germany).

Editorial boards

• PLoS One Academic Editor

• Journal of Pollination Ecology

• Faculty of 1000 (Biology)