Distinguished Speaker Series | Brian A. Wandell, PhD

Brian A. Wandell is the first Isaac and Madeline Stein Family Professor. He is a member of the Stanford Psychology faculty and a member, by courtesy, of Electrical Engineering, Ophthalmology, and the Graduate School of Education. He directs Stanford's Center for Cognitive and Neurobiological Imaging, an MRI service center, and he was deputy director of the Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute from 2013-2021. Wandell’s research centers on vision science, spanning topics from visual disorders, reading development in children, to digital imaging devices and algorithms for both magnetic resonance imaging and digital imaging. Wandell’s work in visual neuroscience uses functional, structural and quantitative MRI along with behavior testing and modeling to understand the action of the visual portions of the brain. His lab has worked to identify and then understand the organization of the visual field maps in the human brain, color and motion processing within these maps, the potential for reorganization following injury, and the development of the cortical circuitry for reading. The Wandell lab develops software tools for digital imaging applications. The software includes methods for analyzing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data, as well as tools to design and evaluate cameras used in a range of applications: consumer photography, medical imaging, and artificial intelligence for automotive applications. Wandell's work has led to commercial applications including two companies that he co-founded, Imageval, LLC and Flywheel.io, LLC.