Wilson S. Geisler
The University of Texas at Austin
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Primary Section: 52, Psychological and Cognitive Sciences Secondary Section: 28, Systems Neuroscience Membership Type:
Member
(elected 2008)
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Biosketch
Wilson (Bill) Geisler holds the David Wechsler Regents Chair in Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. He founded the Center for Perceptual Systems and was its director for over two decades. He is a vision scientist recognized for his experimental and theoretical studies of visual behavior, visual computation, and visual neuroscience in humans and non-human primates. Dr. Geisler was born in Palo Alto, California and grew up in the bay area. He obtained his undergraduate degree in psychology from Stanford University in 1971, and his doctoral degree in experimental and mathematical psychology from Indiana University in 1975. He joined the psychology faculty at the University of Texas in 1975.
Research Interests
Bill Geisler’s primary research interests are in perception and perceptual neuroscience, with an emphasis on vision in humans and non-human primates. His research is interdisciplinary, combining behavioral studies, neurophysiological studies, studies of natural stimuli, mathematical analysis, and computational modeling. He is well known for his work illuminating the relationship between visual performance and the neurophysiology of the visual system, for his work on the mathematics of how to perform perceptual tasks optimally (the “theory of ideal observers”), for his studies of eye movements and visual performance in natural tasks, and for his studies of the relationship between the statistical properties of natural stimuli and the structure, function and evolution of the visual system.
