Sign in

Tom Wallis

@tsawallis.bsky.social
4.8K followers 1.5K following 344 posts

Vision scientist. Professor at the Centre for Cognitive Science, Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany. 🇦🇺🇩🇪. pronoun.is/he www.psychologie.tu-darmstadt.de/per…

PostsRepliesMedia
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Heather Urry @heatherurry.io · 24/09/2026
holy fucking shit - see Claude Code (Opus 5.5) rip through a survey eligility test I was really proud of... It requires tracing a route through designated points on a map with server-side Javascript applying eligibility criteria. (1.5 min video)
63422
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Gautam Kamath @gautamkamath.com · 23/09/2026
NYU Courant professor Tristan Buckmaster, of Navier-Stokes drama fame, gave a talk at the new NYU Mathematics in the Age of AI seminar series. It was... popular.
012115
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Attention in Action Lab @attentioninaction.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
The envy of every kindergarten: Our new #LEGO plate magazine in the lab! #VisualForaging #Attention #CFH_Research
044
Tom Wallis @tsawallis.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
The future sucks.
050
Reposted by Tom Wallis
est. 1997 @molenaide.bsky.social · 21/09/2025
DO YOU REMEMBER
3781424166
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 17/09/2026
So while you're thinking about a super human, super "intelligent" alien being killing you, here's what's really happening. www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08...
abc.net.au
Doctor forced to apologise after AI makes 'scary' error about illegal drugs
Artificial Intelligence is listening to many people's medical appointments, but it is not always hearing things correctly.
10415187
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Nicolas Hénin @nicolashenin.net · 17/09/2026
Nice campaign by the Norwegian Consumer Council about the declining lifespan of products. Enjoy!
180140536472
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
📣 Scholarship programme for applications by graduates in the Netherlands with a non-Western migration background and/or a recent asylum background. If interested to do PhD research in Computational Cognitive Science, feel free to reach out! Info about research lines in our lab in thread below. 🧵
nwo.nl
First round of Mosaic 3.0 now open for applications | NWO
The first round of the updated Mosaic 3.0 PhD scholarship programme is now open for applications. Mosaic encourages the recruitment of graduates from under-represented groups into Dutch academia by fu...
14533
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Marlene Berke @marleneberke.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Do non-human primates have theory of mind? My new paper takes a new computational approach to this classic question. We implemented verbal theories of primates' mental representations as computational models. These models completed classic visual perspective-taking tasks.
28934
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Domi Smithson @domismithson.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
LIVE from OpenFest 2026: Our brilliant keynote speaker @maddipow.bsky.social asks us to confront why feminist scholars still struggle to be heard. What does this mean for open research, how is this serving us but more importantly, how can WE do better? #openfest26 #openscience #genderequity
082
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Eiko Fried @eikofried.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
What a photo. (Police officers arrest a protester during a 'No Kings' rally, 03/26 LA; Étienne Laurent/AFP/Getty Images)

You see police officers arresting a woman dressed as Statue of Liberty
0171
Reposted by Tom Wallis
David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
I resigned from ExxonMobil today. I spent the last three years doing fossil fuel extraction research at both BP and ExxonMobil. Neither company is acting responsibly. They are racing to maximize extraction while the window to act closes, and gambling with our lives. More below.
145136924893
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Arthur Prat @arthurpr4t.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
We derived six laws of psychophysics from a single efficient-coding equation. The laws include Weber's law; scaling laws in visual working memory (which had been noted before, but with unclear theoretical justification); Wei & Stocker's law of human perception; arthurprat.com/pdfs/Prat-Ca...
arthurprat.com
49628
Reposted by Tom Wallis
George Takei @georgetakei.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Sixty years ago today, the starship Enterprise launched and with it, a vision of the future where humanity had moved beyond its divisions. I was there at the beginning, and I can tell you...
685266004803
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Derek Arnold @visnerd.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
A recent paper argued that there is no visual binding problem. I disagree, and wrote a response... journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... Related demonstrations can be found here... staff.psy.uq.edu.au/~uqdarnol/JS...
62412
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Sander van Bree @sandervanbree.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Excited to share our preprint! w/ @martinhebart.bsky.social To understand how primates visually process objects in the world, we rely on both research in human and macaque IT. But what representations of object space are actually shared between them? biorxiv.org/content/10.6... Quick thread 🧵
biorxiv.org
Shared and Distinct High-Dimensional Object Spaces in Human and Macaque Inferotemporal Cortex
Human and macaque studies of inferotemporal cortex (IT) have shaped our understanding of object vision, yet the extent of their representational alignment and the precise nature of this correspondence...
26626
Tom Wallis @tsawallis.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Truth
000
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 16/07/2025
chatgpt is much like an improv comedy group 1) you are the audience, giving it prompts 2) it produces things roughly shaped like your prompt 3) it is trained to respond with Yes, And 4) it has the factual accuracy of improv 5) it does not understand comedy
312106594
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Tal Golan @talgolanneuro.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
How can we design experiments that make computational models disagree? One section of our new @natrevneuro.nature.com Review with @kriegeskorte.bsky.social and @heikoschuett.bsky.social examines studies that used stimulus sets designed to elicit distinct predictions from competing models. 1/16
114156
Tom Wallis @tsawallis.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Don’t miss Lina and Ben today! #ECVP2026
030
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Tom Wallis @tsawallis.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
TU Darmstadt's Perception Lab is at #ECVP2026 in force. We hope you can make it to see our work! @engramm.ing @lreining.bsky.social @lschmittwilken.bsky.social
A graphic depicting the times that TU Darmstadt's Perception Lab members have posters at the European Conference on Visual Perception, 2026.
0184
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Ben Beilharz @engramm.ing · 25/08/2026
Hey @ecvp.bsky.social we got twice the fun for you today (order of visit recommended): T5AM6 Swantje will talk about Dead Leaves stimuli with which you can model natural image statistics. T5AM1 @lreining.bsky.social will talk about how to segment these dead leaves, testing NNs for optimality.
072
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Jonathan Peelle @jpeelle.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
I ran a trainee-focused workshop today on "your online academic presence"—slides here in case they are useful for anyone else! jpeelle.github.io/online-acade...
## Start here

As an academic you should have:

1. A personal website with a stable URL
2. A completed LinkedIn profile
3. A Google Scholar profile (as soon as you have 1 publication)

Whether it's worth going beyond these depends on your personal goals.
6279
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Micah @rincewind.run · 23/08/2026
if responding to racists with “fuck you, you should be excluded from polite society” means I do not support academic freedom then I guess I don’t support academic freedom
342543397
Reposted by Tom Wallis
GestaltReVision @gestaltrevision.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Busy first day for us at #ECVP! Today, @eleftheriapistolas.bsky.social will give a talk in the Multisensory and Haptic Perception Session and Doreen Hii, @elinevg.bsky.social and @lisa-kossmann.bsky.social will present posters in the afternoon session, on Aesthetics and Art. Come find us to chat!
052
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Laura Dugué @lauradugue.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Our lab’s presentations at #ECVP2026 @ecvp.bsky.social start today with the posters of @jayplease.bsky.social and @yuekong4real.bsky.social!
0111
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Ben Beilharz @engramm.ing · 24/08/2026
goooooood mornin‘ @ecvp.bsky.social! If you are an early bird and you like to see something and talk about multi focal display, or just want to know how to easily implement your experiments on one, go ahead and pay Tarek a visit at M3AM1 :) #ecvp26
041
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Digital Brain @yourdigitalbrain.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
These giant African rats sniff out tuberculosis in 3 seconds flat, work microscopes take a full day to do. APOPO's HeroRATs are already saving lives across Africa and Asia.
662570582
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Andrea Lathrop @cabernet.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Fiser J, Aslin RN, Lathrop A, Rothkopf C, Markant J. An infants' eye view of the world: Implications for learning in natural contexts. the International Conference on Infant Studies; Kyoto, Japan. June 19-23, 2006. was one of my favorites.
111
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Thérèse Collins @theresecollins.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Check out work from my lab #ECVP2026 @ecvp.bsky.social Motion direction representations and history effects in fixational eye movements Poster, Tuesday 3:30 With @canmertdoit.bsky.social Ambient and focal dichotomy in face perception Poster, Wednesday 3:30 With Dina Dagher & Karine Doré-Mazars
0113
Reposted by Tom Wallis
ECVP 2026 @ecvp.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
🎉 TODAY’S THE DAY! 🎉 #ECVP2026 begins today in Bournemouth! 👁️🧠 We’re ready for a fantastic week of vision science, workshops, talks, symposia, posters and plenty of opportunities to connect with the ECVP community. Welcome to ECVP 2026 — let’s get started! 🚀 #VisionScience #Perception
0127
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Ben Beilharz @engramm.ing · 03/08/2026
Happy to announce that MRD got accepted by the Journal of Vision (marks the first submission of my phd). Thanks to all editors and reviewers making the paper better over time. If you don't want to wait for the official JoV version, I updated the preprint & repo with the latest code and results.
284
Tom Wallis @tsawallis.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
TU Darmstadt's Perception Lab is at #ECVP2026 in force. We hope you can make it to see our work! @engramm.ing @lreining.bsky.social @lschmittwilken.bsky.social
A graphic depicting the times that TU Darmstadt's Perception Lab members have posters at the European Conference on Visual Perception, 2026.
0184
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Joe Bak-Coleman @jbakcoleman.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Historical examples of the book destroying group being on the right side of history are few and far between.
3153
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Clément Canonne @ccanonne.github.io · 17/08/2026
If you think that AI reviews in conferences "to save time" or "be thorough" or "handle the large # of submissions coming due to AI", ask yourself how much it'll cost, and who will pay. If not "gifted" by companies, this is going to be north of $30+/paper. You expect 1000+ submissions? Budget that.
4224
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Nick Sousanis @nsousanis.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
As folks gear up for the new semester, a reminder if anyone needs it, my Ai statement is available for people to make use of in their own materials. It’s downloadable and printable from my site here spinweaveandcut.com/fall-2025-sy...
a snippet of a mini-comic, at top - straight line stretches from point A to B. Immediately below, same dot at A, then becomes a curving, meandering line that winds through the page and ends at a point with rays and a question mark emanating from it. Text reads: "Nothing can do this for you - for that robs you of experience and conflates answers with learning. Rather, it's all the decisions you make along the way, the mistakes, struggles, and surprises! These pathways you create - this is learning. 

https://spinweaveandcut.com/fall-2025-syllabi/
11361136
Reposted by Tom Wallis
vincentholst.bsky.social @vincentholst.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
In 2023, @nature.com published 'Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time', receiving world-wide media attention. Our Matters Arising, published after a 32 month delay (more on that soon), shows that the reported decline can largely be attributed to dataset artefacts. 🧵
The average CD_5 index per year for Web of Science. The original Park et al. decline (top curve) becomes essentially flat (bottom curve) when removing papers with CD_5=1. Those papers largely correspond to dataset artefacts.
9352173
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
These ratio outcome variables are a plague in the sciences. If your analysis treats 1/2 and 10/20 as the same evidence, then you have discarded uncertainty in the outcome. Model what you measure, not what you construct. Use the denominator as an exposure instead.
612237
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Thomas Serre @thomasserre.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Very much looking forward to welcoming a new colleague! We're hiring at both ranks — the senior (Associate/Full) search is open too, applications due Oct 15: apply.interfolio.com/190696
0237
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Count Binface @countbinface.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
For thousands of years, a solar eclipse has been a prophetic harbinger of a spectacular, epoch-making event. Just saying. #VoteBinface #Clacton
19972941572
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Lynn Schmittwilken @lschmittwilken.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
So happy to see this published! 🎉 Meet **deadleaves**, an #OpenScience Python package for generating Dead Leaves images to study #vision, segmentation, natural image statistics, and beyond. 📄 Paper (JOSS): doi.org/10.21105/jos... 📚 Documentation: deadleaves.readthedocs.io For more info 🧵
1126
Tom Wallis @tsawallis.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Dead Leaves are useful stimuli for studying mid-level vision - and now there’s a Python package that lets you easily generate a variety of dead leaves stimuli! Proud of this work lead by my doctoral student Swantje Mahncke. Check it out!
071
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Cognitive Science Society @cogscisociety.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
The final Glushko Dissertation Prize talk features Lynn Schmittwilken @lschmittwilken.bsky.social, who examines how the tiny movements our eyes make continuously shape visual perception from its earliest moments. #CogSci2026
1192
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Anna Alexandrova @annaalexandrova.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Losing Exeter philosophers of science would be devastating to our field and to the international standing of U.K. universities. Please help us publicise this letter and put pressure to the Exeter execs. Their work as teachers and researchers is irreplaceable #philsci #HigherEd
19567
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Lars C. Reining @lreining.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
Excited this is finally out! I am happy to have built this together with Rabea Turon, @tsawallis.bsky.social and all the others!🎉
163
Tom Wallis @tsawallis.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
New preprint! Have you ever wanted to measure psychometric functions in high-dimensional stimulus spaces, but realised that this is infeasible? We present and validate a technique to adaptively estimate psychometric functions for stimulus spaces up to 50 dimensions. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Adaptive experiments in high-dimensional feature spaces: A particle filtering approach
Behavioral experiments are often infeasible when stimulus spaces have many dimensions or when testing time is limited. One way to address this challenge is adaptive stimulus selection, where informati...
36724
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Jim Waterson @jim.londoncentric.media · 02/08/2026
more good content! imagine publishing content that's just nice! reveals a little bit about having fun on the internet! people just doing things because they can and the internet was nice!
636083
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Reza Shadmehr @rezashadmehr.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
If an action results in error, each neuron requires an individualized teaching signal that guides change in its output. This is the credit assignment problem of learning. Are there neurons in the brain that can compute such a sophisticated teaching signal? Yes. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Climbing fibers encode the gradient of a loss function for the cerebellum
Neurons in the brain are often many synapses away from motoneurons, yet if a movement results in error, each distant neuron needs a teacher that considers its specific contribution to production of th...
218170
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Jolande Fooken @ookenfooken.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
You think you can(not) multitask? Turns out that the sensorimotor system is flexible and intelligent when perceiving and acting on the environment in parallel. Check out one of the main projects from my @dfg.de funded Walter Benjamin!
2139
Reposted by Tom Wallis
Alex Turner @turntrout.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
I resigned from Google DeepMind bc it broke its founding promise by selling AI to the military without restrictions against killer robots or mass spying. For months, I worked to stop this but watched powerful ethicists and institutions choose silence. Here's what happened. 🧵
3456118