Laurent Itti

Who they are: Laurent Itti is a professor of computer science, psychology, and neuroscience at the University of Southern California, where he directs the iLab (USC’s Vision & Attention lab). He is a leading researcher on computational models of visual attention and saliency — how the brain decides what in a scene to look at first.

The concept HaELM draws from: Itti and Christof Koch built one of the first working computational models of “saliency” — a map of an image showing which regions grab visual attention first, based on contrast, color, motion, and orientation, before any conscious thought about meaning. Decode uses this idea to explain why the eye is pulled to a specific part of an ad before the brain processes what it says.

Decode articles where their thinking appears: Spider-Man Took Over Times Square. It Didn’t Need to Say Anything Else.

Source: Wikipedia, “Laurent Itti”; USC Viterbi School of Engineering faculty profile.