Image: Professor Peter Bex
We are delighted to welcome to SOVS our academic visitor Professor Peter Bex from the Department of Psychology at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts.
Professor Bex is in Auckland for three months to work with Professor Dakin’s team and Dr Shuan Dai at the ADHB to develop a new eye-tracking based method of measuring strabismus (crossed eyes) across multiple eye postures and to examine motor and sensory binocular visual function outcomes following ocular alignment surgery. His research uses behavioural and computational techniques to study the pathological processes in eye diseases including age-related macular disease, glaucoma and amblyopia.
When asked to compare the differences between our culture and his own, Prof Bex said:
“In many ways, I find Boston and Auckland to be surprisingly similar. They share a British cultural heritage, beautiful coastline and parks blotted with occasional industry, and an abundance of drivers who have absolutely no regard for other road users. These similarities often make differences between these cities seem even more striking: sirens are rarely heard here, police are seldom seen and the food is not processed in excessive sugar, salt or serving sizes. The downside of this bucolic environment appears to be reflected in the television news, where no event is too trivial to be reported in the headlines. The old saying, ‘if you don’t like the weather, then wait a couple of hours’ appears to be especially relevant in Auckland.”