Benjamin Balas – Curriculum Vitae

 

43 Vassar St., 46-4089

MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences

Cambridge, MA 02139

 

Email: bjbalas@mit.edu

Work Phone: 617-252-1815

Mobile: 617-669-5845

 

EDUCATION

 

1998-2002        Massachusetts Institute of Technology, S.B., Brain and Cognitive Sciences. (GPA 4.9/5.0)

 

2003-present   Massachusettes Institute of Technology, Ph.D candidate. Degree expected May 2007. (GPA 5.0/5.0)

                         Primary research topic: High-level vision, face and object recognition

                         Thesis supervisor: Pawan Sinha

                         Thesis title: “Learning from dynamic objects and recognizing static form”

 

HONORS:  

 

2006               Walle Nauta Award for Continuing Dedication to Teaching – MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences

 

2005               Walle Nauta Award for Continuing Dedication to Teaching – MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences

 

2004                  Angus MacDonald Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching –   

MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.

 

2002                  Hans-Lukas Teuber Award for Outstanding Research in the Brain and

Cognitive Sciences - MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.

 

2004-2007        National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship

 

TEACHING EXPERIENCE:

 

2004                           TA, Introduction to Psychology (Instructor: Jeremy Wolfe)

2005                           TA, Laboratory in Experimental Cognitive Science (Instructor: Pawan Sinha)

2006                           TA, Laboratory in Experimental Cognitive Science (Instructor: Aude Oliva)

2004-2006      TA, MGH Visiting Fellowship Program fMRI Course (Instructor: Robert Savoy)

 

Selected Publications:

Balas, B. & Tenenbaum, J. (2004). Domain-Specificity in Shape Categorization and Perception. Proceedings of the 26th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 67-72.

 

Sinha, P., Balas, B., Ostrovsky, Y., & Russell, R. (2005). Face recognition by Humans. In “Face Recognition: Mechanisms and Models”, Editor R. Chellapa, Academic Press.

 

Gallagher, K., Balas, B., Matheny, J. & Sinha, P. (2005) The Effects of Scene Category and Content on Boundary Extension. Proceedings of the 27th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society.

 

Balas, B. (2006) Using Computational Models to Study Texture Representations in the Human Visual System. Vision Research, 46, 299-309.

 

Balas, B. & Sinha, P. (2006) Receptive Field Structures for Recognition. Neural Computation, 18(3), 497-520.

 

Balas, B., Cox, D.A. & Conwell, E. (2006) The effect of personal familiarity on the speed of face recognition. Proceedings of the 28th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society.

 

Balas, B. & Sinha, P. (in press) Region-based representations for face recognition, ACM Transactions on Applied Perception.

 

Sinha, P., Balas, B., Ostrovsky, Y. & Russell, R. (in press) Face Recognition by Humans: 19 Results all Computer Vision Researchers Should Know About. Proceedings of the IEEE.

 

Balas, B. & Sinha, P. (in press) “Filling-in” color in natural scenes. Visual Cognition

 

Balas, B. & Sinha, P. (in press) Portraits and Perception: Configural Information in Recognizing and Creating Face Images., Spatial Vision

 

Articles under review:

Balas, B. (submitted to Pattern Recognition) Attentive texture similarity as a categorization task: Comparing texture synthesis models.

 

Balas, B. & Sinha, P. (submitted to Vision Research) Learning about dynamic objects: Increases in generalization and sensitivity.

 

Technical reports and conference abstracts:

Peretti, J. H., Balas, B. & Smith, B. (2001). Teacher's LAB: Using curricular materials to promote collaboration. Proceedings of the 2001 European Conference for Computer Supported Collaborative Learning.

 

Balas, B. & Sinha, P. (2003). STICKS: Image representation via non-local comparisons. Journal of Vision, 3(9), 12a.

 

Balas, B. & Sinha, P. (2003). Dissociated Dipoles: Image representation via non-local comparisons, MIT AI Lab Memo #2003-018, CBCL #229. Cambridge, MA.

 

Balas, B., Jameson, M. & Sinha, P. (2004). The illusion of 'pan-field' color. Journal of Vision, 4(8), 161a.

 

Balas, B. & Sinha, P. (2004). Sticks: a non-local vocabulary for image representation. Poster presented at the Society for Neuroscience, San Diego, CA.

 

Balas, B. & Sinha, P. (2005) Motion-based orienting, segmenting and tracking in a model of object learning. 2005 Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society. Sarasota, FL.

 

Sinha, P., Balas, B. & Ostrovsky, Y. (2005) Project DYLAN: Modeling the development of visual object concepts. 2005 Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society. Sarasota, FL.

 

Balas, B. & Sinha, P. (2006) Learning about objects in motion: Better generalization and sensitivity through temporal association. 2006 Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society, Sarasota, FL.