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Jan Koenderink
Universiteit Utrecht
Membership Number: 23
Address: Faculteit Natuur- en Sterrenkunde, Princetonplein 5, 3584 cc Utrecht, Postbus 80000, The Netherlands
Email: j.j.koenderink@phys.uu.nl
Phone: +31 30 2532808
Fax: +31 30 2522664
URL:

Biographical Sketch
Jan J. Koenderink graduated in Physics and Mathematics in 1967 at Utrecht University. He has been associate professor in Experimental Psychology at the Universiteit Groningen, then in 1974 returned to the Universiteit Utrecht where he presently holds a chair in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. He founded the Helmholtz Instituut in which multidisciplinary work in biology, medicine, physics and computer science is coordinated.

He has received an honorific degree (D.Sc.) in Medicine from the University of Leuven and is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. He participates in the editorial boards of a number of scientific journals, scientific boards of international conferences and scientific institutes.

Research interests include cognitive science, ecological physics and machine intelligence.

Universiteit Utrecht (Helmholtz Institute)
The main effort of the Helmholtz Institute is concentrated on information processing in the human brain related to perception of the environment. This includes the study of sensing, perception, motor control, and perceptual-motor integration. It is important to realise that all these parts are closely interrelated. Motor systems can aid perception by serving as a vehicle for active exploration of the environment, such as during manual exploration of an object. Motor systems, however, may also deteriorate sensory information and thus interfere with perception. Motor control and perception are studied as different manifestations of the same information processing system. The efforts of the Helmholtz Institute cover vision and hearing as well as haptic, equilibrium, proprioceptive and electroreceptive systems. These sensory systems are the major carriers of information enabling animals and humans to gain knowledge about their environment. Specific knowledge, skills and techniques with respect to the different parts are brought together in the institute. A major aim is to profit from the variety of approaches. The contributions of all participants is needed to approach the main problems in the perception of natural and artificial sensory environments. In modern society, human beings are confronted with untraditional forms of sensory information such as computer graphics, sound machines and virtual environments. Applications are already found in the areas of medicine, navigation, entertainment, process control, etc. The new forms of information provide unprecedented opportunities for healthy and as well as impaired people. For instance, think of medical imaging, simulation of working environments, aids for auditory or visually impaired people. The new forms of sensory information pose many challenging problems. Questions include how we should present new types of information in order to be useful and how we can learn to interact with new sensory environments. To solve these problems we will need and use techniques from psychology, psychophysics, biophysics, electrophysiology and neural networks. In the institute we use these techniques in the study of the perception-action cycle. These studies will provide an important base for the design and evaluation of artificial sensory environments.


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