معرفی
Michael A. Paradiso is the Sidney A. Fox and Dorothea Doctors Fox Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Science and Professor of Neuroscience at Brown University. He has been a faculty member since 1990 and serves as Director of Biology and Medicine. His research focuses on brain mechanisms underlying vision, particularly neural encoding in primary visual cortex (V1) and interactions between perception and neural activity. Paradiso chairs the NIH/NEI Central Visual Processing Study Section and directs a Vision Research Training Grant.
Education: PhD in Physics (Brown University, 1984), MS (Brown, 1981), BA (Pomona College, 1978). Key honors include the Elizabeth H. LeDuc Teaching Award and Fox Professorship. He co-authored the leading neuroscience textbook Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain, now in its 4th edition and translated into 6 languages.
Research emphasizes visual perception dynamics, including effects of natural scenes, saccadic eye movements, and contextual modulation. Major contributions include identifying V1's role in brightness perception, lightness constancy, and filling-in phenomena. His work bridges neurophysiological recordings in macaques with human perceptual experiments.
Funding: Active NEI grants totaling $1.5M+ support studies on neural mechanisms of visual perception. Completed grants include Whitehall Foundation (1991-1994) and NIH NEI projects (1993-2006).
Teaching: Course director for NEUR 0010 (Introduction to the Brain), one of Brown's most popular courses. Award-winning educator recognized for excellence in teaching life sciences.
Professional roles: Editorial boards for Journal of Vision and Vision Research; former executive committee member of Vision Sciences Society. Collaborators include Stuart Geman (Applied Mathematics) and John Donoghue (Neuroscience).
