Professor Juan Luis Nieves Gómez from the Department of Optics at the University of Granada, welcomes postdoctoral candidates interested in applying for a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowships (MSCA-PF) in 2021 at this University. Please note that applicants must comply with the Mobility Rule (more information about the 2020 call: http://sl.ugr.es/0aNV, the 2021 call is not yet open).

Brief description of the institution:

The University of Granada (UGR), founded in 1531, is one of the largest and most important universities in Spain. With over 60.000 undergraduate and postgraduate students and 6.000 staff. UGR offers a total of 89 degrees, 110 master’s degrees and 28 doctoral programmes through its 123 departments and 27 centers. Consequently, the UGR offers one of the most extensive and diverse ranges of higher education programmes in Spain.

The UGR has awarded with the "Human Resources Excellence in Research (HRS4R)", which reflects the UGR’s commitment to continuously improve its human resource policies in line with the European Charter for Researchers and the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers. UGR is also a leading institution in research, located in the top of Spanish universities by a variety of ranking criteria, such as national R&D projects, fellowships awarded, publications, or international funding. UGR is one of the few Spanish Universities listed in the Shanghai Top 500 ranking - Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) (http://sl.ugr.es/0bsW). The UGR is amongst the 201-300 first universities of the world, between 2nd-5th position of Spanish universities and number 1 in the Andalusian Region in the Shanghai Top 500 ranking. Specialties at UGR that stand out are Library & Information Science (position 32) and Food Science & Technology (position 36). Moreover, the UGR is also situated amongst the first 100 universities in Mining & Mineral Engineering between (76th-100th position), in Mathematics (between 76th-100th position) and in Hospitality & Tourism Management (between 76th-100th position). The edition of the ARWU places the UGR in 201-300th position in the world and as the 4th highest ranked University in Spain, reaffirming its position as an institution at the forefront of national and international research.

Additionally, the UGR has 8 researchers at the top of the Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) list in Computer Sciences & Engineering (position 101-150). It is also well recognized for its web presence (http://sl.ugr.es/0a6i), being positioned at 43th place in the top 200 Universities in Europe.

Internationally, we bet decidedly by our participation in the calls of the Framework Programme of the European Union. For the duration of the last two Framework Programmes, the UGR has obtained a total of 67 projects, with total funding of 18.029 million euros, and for H2020, 118 projects with total funding around 29.115 million euros.

Brief description of the Centre/Research Group:

The Color Imaging Lab belongs to the Optics Department at the University of Granada (ranked among the best 300 universities in the world and the second in Spain, according to the Shanghai ranking 2018).

In this department we have carried out research into both classical Colorimetry (e.g. color differences) and Color Vision (e.g. chromatic discrimination) since the beginning of the 1970s. In the 1990s we became interested in both human and computational color constancy. From its origin in 2000 the Color Imaging Lab has focused on the spectrum based color research and novel methods for spectral data analysis and measurement. Our current research topics are: spectral imaging, spectral estimation algorithms, high dynamic range imaging, de-weathering algorithms, human perception, color vision, visual saliency, polarimetric&spectral imaging, new spectral sensors.

In the research group we have four senior permanent staff and several Ph.D. and Post-doc students. Our laboratory is well-equipped for spectral color research with several spectral cameras (hyperspectral and multispectral) and spectroradiometers as well as eye-trackers and a thermal camera. Our university has also the facility to use color and spectral cameras on drones.

Our group is a consortium member of the and Erasmus+ COSI-master programmes. We are very active in international collaboration (i.e. half of our papers have international co-authorship). In research, we have project funding from the University of Granada, the Regional Government of Andalucia, the Spanish Government and from industrial partners.

Project description:

Computational, psychophysical and functional brain networks guiding the estimation of relevant colors that describe the color palette of paintings

In a previous research project we heuristically introduced the so-called “relevant colors” in a painting to describe the number of colors that would stand out for an observer when just glancing at a painting. These relevant colors would characterize the color palette of a scene as being obtained on the basis of the discernible colors that were colorimetrically different within the scene. We computationally obtained a number of 18 relevant colors, which were representative on average of the color content of every image. We increased the dimensions of the cubes in which we divide the CIELAB color space, and we established a dimension while also setting as the parameter the minimum threshold of colors in each cube, i.e., the minimum percentage of colors compared to the total that should be within the cube.

The purpose of this work is to apply different decision strategies (i.e. from a psychophysical, computational and neurophysiological point of view) to estimate the relevant colors describing a painting and to analyze possible functional brain networks guiding those strategies. Linear Support Vector Machine (SVM), Fuzzy Logic and/or other related algorithms could be implemented for both classification and regression problems. So different strategies will be analyzed to improve the way we have taken the division of the space into regions in every CIELAB direction. This research project will focus also on how to connect those approaches with a subjective determination of the relevant colors found in different paintings. Besides the relevant colors characterizing a painting could trigger changes in brain activity which could be captured using electroencephalography (EEG). Proper and public paintings image-databases will be used to test and run all experiments.

Research Area:

• Information Science and Engineering (ENG)

• Life Sciences (LIFE)

• Physics (PHY)

For a correct evaluation of your candidature, please send the documents below to Professor Juan Luis Nieves Gómez (jnieves@ugr.es):

• CV
• Letter of recommendation (optional)