4  Supervision

Supporting young scientists at all levels (bachelor, master and PhD) is my primary task, but for me there is huge a difference between doing this through teaching in the framework of the university curriculum and mentoring research projects. Those students who are interested in conducting research projects under my supervision become a part of my team. To give the reader an insight into my major supervision principles, I reproduce here their summary, which I submitted to the Jury when I was nominated for the Seraphine-Puchleitner-Preis of the Doctoral Academy.

4.1 At the University of Graz1

4.1.1 Doctoral thesis

Period Person Topic Success stories
10/2024 - present Carmen Pizka The role of the human claustrum in perception and consciousness
01/2024 - present Bettina Ujhelyi The contribution of the default mode network to subjective visual experience
06/2021-present Adam Coates The role of the human claustrum in generating subjective visual experience
09/2020-present Cemre Yilmaz Phenomenology of transitions in binocular rivalry
04/2020-05/2024 Ana Arsenovic Fine-scale neural correlates of subjective visual experience currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Marinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, MGH/Harvard Medical School
04/2020-12/2024 Marilena Wilding Prestimulus activity and connectivity underlying subjective visual experience Thesis was awarded the Josef Krainer Preis of the State of Styria

4.1.2 Master’s theses

Period Person Topic Success stories
09/2023-present Leon Gönitzer Detection of the composite face effect in the primary visual cortex using machine learning
10/2022-09/2023 Marius Kreis Visual illusion perception in the lateral geniculate nucleus of the thalamus Currently a doctoral student at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen
03/2021-09/2023 Jill Kemper An analysis of brain activity at resting state in subjects with myopia
03/2021-01/2022 Wilma Konrad2 Living with Low Visual Acuity: An Analysis of Cortical Thickness in Subjects with Uncorrected Myopia in the Context of Predictive Processing
03/2021-05/2022 Erik Fink Dimensions of mindfulness as predictors for bottom-up and top-down mechanisms in visual perception Currently a PhD student at the University of Bern, Switzerland; co-authored a publication (Zaretskaya et al. 2022)
10/2020-05/2022 Magdalena Lhotka Investigating a common factor for illusory percepts: A test of predictive coding theory Thesis resulted in a publication (Lhotka et al. 2023)
10/2019-08/2021 Kilian Hönes (co-supervised with C. Körner) Depth Perception in Optical Illusuions using the example of the Kanizsa figure
10/2019-30/2020 Viola Lechner (co-supervised with A. Ischebeck) The role of confidence in estimating the intention and onset for voluntary movement and its relationship to brain potentials Received an INGE St. Prize for an outstanding master’s thesis
03/2019-9/2020 Lorenz von Martial (co-supervised with A. Ischebeck) Effects of the Numerical Distance Effect on Binocular Rivalry
02/2019-01/2021 Malte Kraus (co-supervised with C. Körner) Depth Perception in Optical Illusions. Measuring Vergence Eye Movements Under Dichoptic Viewing Conditions
03/2018-04/2024 Merle Grunau (co-supervised with A. Ischebeck) Binocular Rivalry: The influence of auditory attention on the alternation rate

4.1.3 Bachelor’s theses

9 Bachelor’s thesis on different topics related to functinal MRI, visual perception, and visual illusions, available at https://online.uni-graz.at/kfu_online/wbAbs.showMaskAbsBetreuer?pOrgNr=&pPersNr=120381&pListType=B

4.1.4 Internship projects

My lab is open for interns, as long as we have a free desk and/or computing capacity. I appreaciate students who want to contribute to our research, usually unpaid, and give them a chance to choose the project they like and feel comfortable with conducting. For those who finish their internship, we have a little appreciation present - a coffe mug with a thank you message, and an open door for having coffee with us. Interns contribute quite a bit to making our already quite international team even more international. In the past we had students from the University of Graz, University of Toronto, University of Palermo, Trinity College Dublin.

Intern appreciation mug of the Visual Neuroscience Lab

4.2 At the University of Tübingen3

Thesis type Period Person Topic Success story
Doctoral 01/2015-02/2019 Pablo Grassi “fMRI of perceptual grouping” Currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Tübingen
Master’s 09/2014-03/2015 Alexandra Sipatchin4 “Causal contribution of the inferior frontal cortex to binocular rivalry” PhD student at ZEISS Vision Science Lab, Tübingen, currently a researcher in the industry
Master’s 03/2014 -12/2014 Pablo Grassi5 “Parietal cortex mediates perceptual Gestalt grouping independent of stimulus size” Published (Grassi, Zaretskaya, and Bartels 2016)

Additionally, I was regularly responsible for student supervision within the Erasmus internship program, DAAD and other programs with students from France, Germany, India, Italy, Taiwan

  1. This information is partly available at UGOnline: https://online.uni-graz.at/kfu_online/wbAbs.showMaskAbsBetreuer?pOrgNr=&pPersNr=120381&pListType=B↩︎

  2. Exchange student from the Middle European interdisciplinary Master’s program in cognitive science (MEi:CogSci), Vienna↩︎

  3. Co-supervised with Andreas Bartels↩︎

  4. Exchange student from the University of Padova↩︎

  5. Exchange student from the University of Freiburg↩︎