FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ON March 28, 2006
University of Toronto Student to be Honored for Research in Face Recognition
St. Paul, Minn., -
Alissa Wright, a medical student at the University of Toronto in Toronto, Canada, will be honored with the Saul R. Korey Award for her work in facial recognition. Wright will receive the award during the American Academy of Neurology’s 58th Annual Meeting in San Diego, Calif., held April 1 – 8. The Saul R. Korey Award seeks to stimulate interest in the field of neurology as an exciting and challenging profession by offering highly competitive awards for the best essay. This is one of four Medical Student Essay Awards offered by the American Academy of Neurology. Wright is expected to give a poster presentation based on her essay during the meeting. Wright’s essay, “Viewpoint Variance and the Discrimination of Upright and Inverted Faces,” examines an how an individual’s ability to discriminate between three faces (two identical, one different) changed along with the orientation of the faces. “This experiment adds to our knowledge of how our brain functions during facial recognition,” said Wright. “It furthers our understanding of how the brain processes facial information and may even contribute to a functional conception of how our brain is wired. It has a potential clinical application in characterizing an individual’s face recognition abilities, particularly following complaints of poor or diminished face recognition ability.” The 58th Annual Meeting takes place in the San Diego Convention Center. It is the world’s largest annual gathering of neurologists.