We are pleased to announce that the 2024 Verriest Medal will be awarded to Professor Karl Gegenfurtner at the 27th ICVS Symposium, to be held in Ljubljana, Slovenia from July 5-9, 2024. The award was established in 1991 in memory of the founder of the Society, Dr. Guy Verriest, and honours outstanding contributions in the field of colour vision.
Professor Gegenfurtner’s career in colour vision began with doctoral studies at New York University under the supervision of George Sperling and John Krauskopf, followed by a post-doctoral fellowship at NYU with Anthony Movshon, and then by appointments at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen and Otto-von- Guericke University, Magdeburg. He took up his present position as Professor of Psychology at the Justus-Liebig-University Giessen in 2001.
His research contributions have ranged from low-level chromatic adaptation and discrimination, through colour constancy and higherlevel cortical mechanisms, all the way to cognitive aspects such as colour memory, colour categorization, and colour in scene and object recognition. His work is centred on psychophysics, but he has embraced methodological innovations, using the power of deep neural networks and the immersive capabilities of virtual reality. His influential review articles have brought developments in colour vision to the larger community, and his laboratory in Giessen has provided a welcoming and productive environment for colour vision scientists from across the world.