Oliver Layton

Neuroscientist Oliver Layton studies human visual perception. His research focuses on clarifying the brain mechanisms underlying human self-motion and object-motion perception. He seeks to improve our understanding of how the human visual system works at a fundamental mechanistic level and to develop adaptive, intelligent, efficient algorithms inspired by the primate brain’s design to enable human-like autonomous navigation in artificial systems.

Out of Layton’s 12 peer-reviewed journal articles, he was lead author on seven, and three included Colby students as coauthors. He publishes in top-tier venues and combines computational work with creative, rigorous, and original experimental work. He played a key role in restructuring the core computer science course sequence and developing the Computer Science Department’s strategic plan. He also served on the Information Technology Committee and the McVey Data Science Committee.

Layton came to Colby in 2018 after completing post-doctoral fellowships at Boston University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He received his Ph.D. in cognitive and neural systems from Boston University and his B.A. in mathematics and computational neuroscience from Skidmore College.