Grace Jin
We welcome Grace Jin to the Clinical Vision Science Lab. Grace is a Science Scholars student who is studying the effect of fatigue on pupil response.
Summit 2021
Soheil presenting at Summit 2021
On 8 July 2021, Soheil gave a talk at SUMMIT 2021 - a postdoc-led conference at the Grafton Campus of the University of Auckland. His talk was titled “Measuring functional visual field loss using involuntary eye movements” and described how he is using changes in the optokinetic response to detect visual field loss due to conditions such as glaucoma.
New Zealand Brain Bee Challenge
On the 1st of July, the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences at the University of Auckland hosted a site visit as part of Round 2 of the NZ Brain Bee Challenge. The Brain Bee Challenge is a competition for high school students in year 11 to learn about the brain and its functions, learn about neuroscience research and find out about careers in neuroscience. The Faculty hosted 170 Year-11 high school students plus 30 teachers/parent supervisors from the North Island. The Brain Bee competition is a flagship outreach events for the Centre for Brain Research.
The School of Optometry and Vision Science ran some fun activities to demonstrate vision science. One activity was a hacky sack game combined with a visual illusion that changes our perception of size: would changes in the size of the central disk/hole affect how well students hit the target! This hands-on experiment was designed to teach the students how a simple vision science experiment works. We also had interactive eye-tracking demos, including demonstrating how people with vision loss perceive the world. In another eye-tracking demo, students drew simple shapes on a computer using only their eyes!
Excerpt from a feedback email: “The running of Brain Bee was a resounding success again due to the tremendous and superb effort put in by all our volunteers. The event showcases our enthusiasm for neuroscience and the world-class work we do. The teachers, parents and students have gone away with memories of an amazing day.”
Soheil's PhD Graduation
From left to right: Prof. Steven Dakin, Soheil’s main supervisor; Dr Soheil Doustkouhi and Dr Phil Turnbull, Soheil’s co-supervisor.
We celebrated Soheil’s PhD graduation on the 1st of Jun 2021. Soheil Studied how involuntary eye movements can be used to measure vision. Particularly he focused on how measuring a certain type of involuntary eye movement known as optokinetic nystagmus could help us measure the effect of refractive blur and visual field loss.
Raising the Bar
Each year the University participates in Raising the Bar, an international event in which universities give back to their communities by offering free talks in local bars on a wide range of topics.
On 20 April 2021, Professor Steven Dakin was one of two presenters from the Faculty of Medical & Health Sciences speaking at the Auckland Raising the Bar event, at Everybody’s bar in Fort Street.
The topic was the development of ways to use technology such as AI and e-readers to diagnose eye disease and brain dysfunction. The vision is for common consumer-owned devices to increasingly capture data which will enable physicians to pick up on the subtle signs of a range of health conditions earlier, to support more equitable and effective interventions.
NZ-NEC summer scholar symposium
From right to left: Vanshika Nadgir, Michelle Tiang, Gabriel Lobo, Prof. Steven Dakin, Soheil Doustkouhi, Aryaman Taore, Selassie Tagoh
DakinLab’s summer students, Vanshika, Michelle and Gabriel, presented their research projects at the New Zeland National Eye Center (NZ-NEC) summer scholar symposium.