Professor Barton L. Anderson is a Professor in the School of Psychology, Faculty of Science, at the University of Sydney. He earned his PhD from Vanderbilt University in 1990. His professional career encompasses a postdoctoral position at Harvard University from August 1990 to August 1992, an appointment as Associate Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from July 1995 to October 2003, and Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales from October 2003 to January 2008. He joined the University of Sydney in 2008 and holds the position of full Professor.

Anderson's research lies within vision science, with emphasis on mid-level vision and the perceptual mechanisms that enable the inference of three-dimensional shape, surface properties, and material attributes from retinal images. His investigations cover topics such as lightness perception, image segmentation, transparency, gloss perception, specular surface reflectance, shading, illusory contours, contour synthesis, self-occluding contours, the role of color in shape perception, and the interactions between shape, material, and illumination cues. He has contributed key publications including 'A theory of illusory lightness and transparency in monocular and binocular images: The role of contour junctions' (1997), 'The perception and misperception of specular surface reflectance' (2012), 'Image statistics do not explain the perception of gloss and lightness' (2009), 'Toward a perceptual theory of transparency' (2002), and 'Image segmentation and lightness perception' (2005). Recent works feature 'Interactions Between 3D Surface Shape and Material Perception' (2024), 'The role of self-occluding contours in material perception' (2023), 'Perceiving the shape and material properties of 3D surfaces' (2022), and 'The role of color in the perception of three-dimensional shape' (2022). Anderson has received funding from the Australian Research Council through Discovery Projects such as DP130104905 ('The visual perception of three-dimensional shape, surfaces, and materials'), DP0881800 ('Image segmentation and the perception of lightness and color'), DP160101659, and DP190103422, as well as DVC Research support in 2008. He presented as an invited speaker at IEEE VIS 2023.

Professional Email: barton.anderson@sydney.edu.au