Education

2003	Ph.D.	Computer Science, Yale University.	Thesis: The Perceptual Organization of Visual Flows. Advisor: Steven W. Zucker
2000	M.Phil.	Computer Science, Yale University.
1996	M.Sc.	Computer Science, Technion, Israel.	Thesis: On the Rearrangement of Movable Objects by a Mobile Robot. Advisor: Ehud Rivlin
1989	B.Sc. (summa cum laude)	Computer Science, Technion, Israel.

Research Interests

Computer vision, computational models of biological vision, neurophysiology of the visual cortex, human perception and psychophysics, artificial intelligence (especially mahine learning, neural networks, and computational aspects of robotics) and computer graphics.

Honors and Awards

1999	Aspen International Design Conference. Winning team in the Mouse category.
1996	The Gutwirth outstanding graduate student research award, Technion, Israel.
1996	Conference Travel Grant, IEEE.
1989	B.Sc. summa cum laude, Technion, Israel.
1986-1989	President's list, Technion, Israel.

Research and Professional Experience

Sep 2003	-	Present	Postdoctoral Associate, Department of Computer Science, Yale university. Conduct research in computional vision, human perception and psychophysics, and computational neuroscience of visual processes.
Jan 1997	-	Aug 2003	Research Assistant, Department of Computer Science, Yale university. Conducted research in biologically motivated computer vision and perceptual organization, psychophysics of human perception, and computational modeling of neurophysiological and anatomical aspects of primary visual cortex.
Mar 1996	-	Jan 1997	R&D Engineer, Elscint Corp., Haifa, Israel. Conducted R&D of medical imaging algorithms for nuclear medicine systems. Initiated a departmental-wide revision of software engineering and code development regulations.
Mar 1994	-	Mar 1996	Research Assistant, Department of Computer Science, Technion, Israel Conducted research in motion and manipulation planning for mobile robots. Maintained the lab's mobile robotic infrastructure. Instructed and supervised projects by undergraduate and graduate students.
Mar 1989	-	Feb 1994	Senior Software Engineer, IDF, Israel Was in charge of the design and implementation of software architectures and system modules for the communication interface between several large scale systems (hundreds man-years). Guided and instructed programmers.
Aug 1989	-	Aug 1990	Designer of Psychometric Tests, Hatslaha (success), Tel-Aviv, Israel Designed psychometric tests to be used in training and preparation of college applicants.

Teaching Experience

Oct 1997	-	May 2003	Teaching Assistant, Yale university. Courses: Artificial inteligence Computational Vision and Biological Perception Elements of computing Introduction to Computer Science Computer Science and the Modern Intellectual Agenda Beginners and Advanced Hebrew
Mar 1995	-	Mar 1996	Assistant Instructor, The college of Management (Hamichlala Leminhal) , Haifa branch, Israel. Taught - Computer architecture.
Mar 1995	-	Mar 1996	Teaching Assistant, Department of Continuing Education and External Studies , Technion, Israel Taught - Computer architecture.
Mar 1994	-	Mar 1996	Teaching Assistant, Department of Computer Science , Technion, Israel. Taught - Computer architecture.
Oct 1987	-	Feb 1989	Instructor, The Technological Manpower Program, Technion, Haifa, Israel. Taught - programming languages (to high school students).

Other Professional activities

• Ad Hoc Manuscript Reviewing
  
  
  • IEEE transaction on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence (PAMI).
  • International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV).
  • IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR).
  • International Conference on Computer Analysis of Images and Patterns (CAIP).
  • International Workshop on Biologically Motivated Computer Vision (BMCV).
  • Asian Conference on Computer Vision (ACCV).
  
  
• University Service
  
  
  • 2000-2003 : Founding organizer, CVC Round Table, Yale university.
  • 2002-2003 : Coordinator, Vision Lunch seminar series, Yale university.
  • 2001-2002 : Web master, Center for Computational Vision and Control , Yale university.
  • 1995-1996 : Students' project advisor, Center for Intelligent Systems, Technion, Israel.
  
  
• Professional Affiliations
  
  
  • IEEE (member)

Publications

• Theses
  
  

  	O. Ben-Shahar, The Perceptual Organization of Visual Flows, Ph.D. Thesis, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, 2003.
  	O. Ben-Shahar, To Push or Not to Push: On the Rearrangement of Movable Objects by a Mobile Robotof, M.Sc. Thesis, Technion, Haifa, Israel, 1996.

  
  
• Journal Articles
  
  

  	O. Ben-Shahar and S.W. Zucker, Geometrical Computations Explain Projection Patterns of Long Range Horizontal Connections in Visual Cortex, Neural Computation 16(3) 445-476, 2004.
  	O. Ben-Shahar and S.W. Zucker, Sensitivity to Curvature Revealed in Orientation-Based Texture Segmentation, Vision Research, 44(3) 257-277, 2004.
  	O. Ben-Shahar and S.W. Zucker (2003), The Perceptual Organization of Texture Flow: A Contextual Inference Approach, IEEE Transaction on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 25(4) 401-417, 2003.
  	O. Ben-Shahar, P. Huggins, T. Izo, and S.W. Zucker (2003), Cortical Connections and Early Visual Function: Intra- and Inter-Columnar Processing, Journal of Physiology-Paris, 97(2-3), 191-208, 2003
  	O. Ben-Shahar and E. Rivlin (1998), Practical Pushing Planning for Rearrangement Tasks, IEEE Transaction on Robotics and Automation, 14(4) 549-565, 1998.
  	O. Ben-Shahar and E. Rivlin (1998), On the Rearrangement of Movable objects by a Mobile Robot , IEEE Transaction on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, 28(5) 667-679, 1998.

  
  
• Journal Articles Under Review or In Preparation
  
  

  	A formal good continuation model for general 2D scalar functions: Level sets, geometry and harmonic maps , (In preparation).
  	A Complete Perceptual Organization Approach to Color Image Denoising , (In preparation).
  	O. Ben-Shahar and S.W. Zucker, Hues, Horizontal Connections, and Visual Cortex , (Submitted).
  	O. Ben-Shahar, B.J. Scholl, and S.W. Zucker, Bridging the Gap Between Object-Based Attention and Texton-Based Segmentation: How Attention Spreads Through Orientation-Defined Textures, (Submitted).

  
  
• Conference and Workshop Articles
  
  

  	O. Ben-Shahar and S.W. Zucker (2003), Hue Fields and Color Curvatures: A Perceptual Organization Approach to Color Image Denoising, In the Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, Wisconsin, June 2003.
  	B.J. Scholl, O. Ben-Shahar, and A. Marino (2003), What counts as an 'object' of object-based attention?, Annual meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Vancouver, Canada, November 2003.
  	O. Ben-Shahar, B. Scholl, and S.W. Zucker (2003), Where objects come from: Attention, segmentation, and textons, Journal of Vision, 3(9), 474a, 2003. The Annual meeting of the Vision Science Society, Sarasota, Florida, May 2003.
  	O. Ben-Shahar, P. Huggins, and S.W. Zucker (2002), On Computing Visual Flows with Boundaries: The Case of Shading and Edges, 2nd Workshop on Biologically Motivated Computer Vision, Tübingen, Germany, November 2002. Springer's Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2525.
  	O. Ben-Shahar and S.W. Zucker (2002), Curvature and the Perceptual Organization of Texture Flows , Journal of Vision, 2(7), 468a, 2002. The Annual meeting of the Vision Science Society, Sarasota, Florida, May 2002.
  	O. Ben-Shahar and S.W. Zucker (2001), On the Perceptual Organization of Texture and Shading Flows: From a Geometrical Model to Coherence Computation, In the Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, Hawaii, December 2001.
  	O. Ben-Shahar and S.W. Zucker (2001), Flowing toward coherence: On the geometry of texture and shading flow , The third workshop on Perceptual Organization in Computer Vision, Vancouver, Canada, July 2001.
  	G. Hager and D. Kriegman and A. Georghiades and O. Ben-Shahar (1998), Towards Domain Independent Navigation: Dynamic Vision and Control, In the Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, 1998.
  	O. Ben-Shahar and E. Rivlin (1996), To Push or not to Push II: Practical Pushing Planning for Rearrangement Tasks , In the proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation, 1996.
  	O. Ben-Shahar and E. Rivlin (1996), To Push or not to Push I: On the Rearrangement of Movable objects by a Mobile Robot , In the proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Robotics and Automation, 1996.

  
  

Military Service

1989-1994: Captain (Ret.), IDF (Israel Defense Force) .

References

Available upon request (or see the PDF version)