Aude Oliva is a French professor of computer vision, neuroscience, and human-computer interaction at the

MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is a research institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) formed by the 2003 merger of the Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) and the Artificial Intelligence Lab ...

(CSAIL).

Education

Oliva has a dual

French baccalaureate French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with France ...

in mathematics and physics. She then earned a Masters of Science in experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience from the Institut National Polytechnique in Grenoble and then a doctorate from the same university in 1995. She joined the MIT faculty in 2004 and CSAIL in 2012.

Research

Oliva's group investigates how psychological perception of an image can change based on memorability, content, and limitations of human visual systems. Her most recognizable work is the

hybrid image A hybrid image is an image that is visual perception, perceived in one of two different ways, depending on viewing distance, based on the way humans process visual input. A technique for creating hybrid images exhibiting this optical illusion ...

, the classic example of which combines the high-frequency outline and detail of

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...

's face with a blurry, low-frequency image of

Marilyn Monroe Marilyn Monroe (; born Norma Jeane Mortenson; 1 June 1926 4 August 1962) was an American actress. Famous for playing comedic " blonde bombshell" characters, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s and early 1960s, as wel ...

; the latter becomes focused only when viewed from long distances. Such images have found use in information privacy, time-lapses, marketing, and brainteasers. Another branch of her research deals with object-vs-scene image processing in human brains, where Oliva and others have postulated that part of our visual system focuses on a fast recognition and classification of a familiar scene (birthday party) rather than individual component objects in the scene (cake). She has most recently used

deep learning Deep learning (also known as deep structured learning) is part of a broader family of machine learning methods based on artificial neural networks with representation learning. Learning can be supervised, semi-supervised or unsupervised. De ...

to teach computers how to recognize locations in an image by a combination of its features. For example, a bed, window, and posters might indicate a bedroom, while a stove, tile, and countertop might indicate a kitchen. Oliva's work has been used by those in the field of

artificial imagination Artificial imagination, also called synthetic imagination or machine imagination, is defined as the artificial simulation of human imagination by general or special purpose computers or artificial neural networks. The applied form of it is known ...

, the concept of building a human-like consciousness from computer algorithms.

Awards

* 2016 –

Vannevar Bush Vannevar Bush ( ; March 11, 1890 – June 28, 1974) was an American engineer, inventor and science administrator, who during World War II headed the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), through which almost all wartime ...

Fellow * 2014 – Guggenheim Fellow * 2006 – CAREER Award, Cognitive Neuroscience * Fellow,

Association for Psychological Science The Association for Psychological Science (APS), previously the American Psychological Society, is an international non-profit organization whose mission is to promote, protect, and advance the interests of scientifically oriented psychology in ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Oliva, Aude Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Computer vision researchers French women computer scientists Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory people