Dr Jac Billington

Profile

I completed a PhD in neuroscience at the University of Cambridge in 2007 and subsequently worked for five years as a postdoctoral research fellow at Royal Holloway, University of London prior to coming to Leeds in 2012.  My research focus is in understanding how people extract visual  information from the surrounding environment for the purpose of voluntary action and successful self-motion. I am particularly interested in the neuroscientific underpinnings of such behaviours. I use a variety of techniques and approaches in my research, including: EEG, fMRI, MRI, eye-tracking, psychophysics and virtual environments.  My research has been funded by the Leverhulme Trust, EPSRC, NIHR and The White Rose Consortium.

Responsibilities

• Deputy Head of School
• Athena SWAN lead

Research interests

I am currently focussed on the following funded projects: 

• Leverhulme Fellowship (PI)

 To see or not to see: Camouflage and human process of detection: Using computational methods to simulate this evolutionary process in the context of considering why human observers sometimes fail to detect objects which pose a threat in a variety of environments.

• EPSRC Project Grant:

COMMOTIONS:  Computational Models of Traffic Interactions for Testing of Automated Vehicles

Qualifications

• BSc (Hons) Psychology: Durham University
• PhD Neuroscience: University of Cambridge

Professional memberships

• Member of the Experimental Psychology Society

Student education

I currently teach on:

• Perception (Module Leader)
• Major Project
• Systematic Review

I currently supervise the following PhD students:

• Shaista Meer
• Courtney Goodridge
• Matea Ćelić

Research groups and institutes

• Cognitive Neuroimaging

Current postgraduate researchers

• Shaista Meer