Deborah Aks

As a research scientist at the Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science in New Jersey, Deborah Aks brings more than two decades of relevant teaching and research experience to her work, as well as a specialized background in studies of visual perception, attention, and the dynamics of human behavior. Based at Rutgers since 2005, Dr. Aks investigates groundbreaking phenomena in visual science, as demonstrated by her unique application of dynamical systems theory to understanding human behavior.

Prior to her current role as a Research Scientist, Dr. Aks spent five years as a Research Associate Professor at Rutgers, during which time she undertook various investigations into matters of visual search and object tracking.

Alongside cognitive scientist Zenon Pylyshyn, Deborah Aks works on several experiments that reveal the ways in which humans track objects. Among their objectives, they seek to further the development of the visual indexing theory using a novel eye-blink paradigm to test the effect of interruptions while people track objects. In recent years, Dr. Aks has shared some of her findings in the Journal of Vision, Vision Science Society, articles in IBM's Midsize Insider, and in chapters in Web and conventional books on "Tutorials in Contemporary Nonlinear Methods for the Behavioral Sciences," with one a publication of the National Science Foundation.

Employed by the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater from 1993 through 2005, Deborah Aks balanced her research with teaching responsibilities as an Assistant Professor and then as an Associate Professor of Psychology. Throughout this period, Dr. Aks held a variety of university appointments, presented papers at several society conferences, and published her work in Books and Journals on Nonlinear Dynamics, Perceptual and Motor Skills, and the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance. Deborah Aks earned both her Ph.D. and M.A. in Experimental Psychology from the University of British Columbia.

When not working at Rutgers, Deborah Aks pursues a number of personal projects, including sailing, dog training and web design.