Our second confirmed Keynote speaker is Prof. Hannah Smithson, Professor of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford and Fellow of Pembrooke College, Oxford. 

Hannah did her PhD at the University of Cambridge and postdoctoral training at the Unviversity of Chicago and SUNY College of Optometry. She was then an affiliated lecturer for one year at the University of Cambridge, before undertaking another postdoc position at the Intitute of Ophthalmology, UCL. She was a lecturer at the University of Durham before moving to Oxford.

Hannah's research addresses the question of how the eye and brain process visual information, primarily using psychophysics and adaptive optics. She is particularly interested in colour vision and in understanding the retinal and cortical neural circuits that allow efficient transmission of colour information. She is also interested in colour constancy and in how the visual system processes rapid sequences of visual events. 

Hannah and her research group are currently developing and using adaptive optics systems to image the living human retina with high fidelity and to present visual stimuli targeted to specific retinal microstructure. Using these techniques she is addressing questions about human vision and colour vision including the role of fixational eyemovements and how retinal circuits adapt to maintain sensitivity across the vast range of environmental light levels.