Education:
Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology (Neurobiology Division), University of California, Berkeley, May 1995.
A.B. in Physiology/Anatomy, University of California, Berkeley, May 1990.
Also attended Rockefeller University, New York, NY, Aug. 1990-Nov. 1991.
Academic and Professional Honors:
Individual National Research Service Award, National Eye Institute, June 1995-May 1998.
Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Citation, U.C. Berkeley, 1993.
Regents' Fellowship, U.C. Berkeley, Aug. 1992.
Three-year Predoctoral Fellowship, National Science Foundation, Aug. 1990.
Departmental Citation (top graduating student), Department of Physiology/Anatomy, U.C. Berkeley, May 1990.
Chancellor's Scholarship, U.C. Berkeley, Aug. 1985-May 1990.
Phi Beta Kappa, U.C. Berkeley.
Research and Professional Appointments:
Programmer/Analyst, June 1998-Present, , Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, San Francisco, CA.
Post-Doctoral Fellow, June 1995-1998, Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, San Francisco, CA. Psychophysics and computational modeling of human spatial vision and image processing. Electrophysiology of primary visual cortex.
Graduate research, Jan. 1992-May 1995, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, Division of Neurobiology, U.C. Berkeley. Psychophysics of Human Binocular Vision.
Graduate research, Aug. 1990- Nov. 1991, Laboratory of Neurobiology, Rockefeller University. Electrophysiology of primary visual cortex.
Undergraduate honors research, June 1988-July 1990, Department of Physiology/Anatomy, U.C. Berkeley. Psychophysics of Human Binocular Vision.
Publications:
Pettet, M.W. (1999) Shape and contour detection. Vision Research, 39(3) 551-7.
Polat, U., Mizobe, K., Pettet, M.W., Kasamatsu, T., & Norcia, A.M. (1998) Collinear stimuli regulate visual responses depending on cell's contrast threshold. Nature, 391(6667) 580-4.
Pettet, M.W., McKee, S.P., & Grzywacz, N.M. (1998) Constraints on long range interactions mediating contour detection. Vision Research, 38(6) 865-79.
Pettet, M.W., (1997) Spatial interactions modulate stereoscopic processing of horizontal and vertical disparities. Perception 26, 693-706.
Pettet, M.W., (1995). The Role of Vertical Disparity in Human Stereoscopic Vision, doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.
Pettet, M.W., & Gilbert, C.D. (1992). Dynamic changes in receptive-field size in cat primary visual cortex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 89, 8366-8370.
Westheimer, G., & Pettet, M.W. (1992). Detection and processing of vertical disparity by the human observer. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B, 250, 243-247.
Westheimer, G., & Pettet, M.W. (1990). Contrast and duration of exposure differentially affect vernier and stereoscopic acuity. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B, 241, 42-46.
Summary of Technical Experience:
11 years C and C++ application design and development for DOS, UNIX, and MacOS; experimental control and video animation software for scientific research; offline data analysis using Microsoft Excel and Matlab. Familiarity with MetroWerks IDE, PowerPlant Constructor and C++ Standard Template Library.
Current Projects:
DIVAVideo
The Infant Vision Research Laboratory at Smith-Kettlewell develops and maintains a computerized research tool called DIVA (Digital Instrumentation for Visual Assessment). DIVA allows scientists and physicians to non-invasively record and analyze electrical brain responses to precisely-controlled visual stimulus patterns. DIVA is used for basic research of human visual processing and for clinical evaluation of visual function in infants and children too young to read eye charts.
DIVA consists of two C++ applications, DIVAHost and DIVAVideo, which run concurrently on two custom-networked PowerMac computers. DIVAHost presents a user interface for the scientist or physician to configure experimental or diagnostic stimulus protocols, and controls the digital acquisition, spectral analysis, and visualization of electrical activity measured by an array of scalp sensors. DIVAVideo transforms the parametric description of the visual stimulus paradigm transmitted by DIVAHost into a full-screen animation sequence whose timing is precisely locked to the sampling rate of DIVAHost's data acquisition hardware. DIVAVideo also provides support for calibration of monitor luminance using a custom photocell unit developed at Smith-Kettlewell.. Finally, DIVAVideo also includes gamma-correction functionality for a special device (the Pelli Video Attenuator) that converts an 8-bit RGB video signal into a 12-bit monochrome signal for precision rendering of low contrast graphics.
My responsibilities on this project include design, implementation, and testing of: 1) all C++ classes for management of QuickDraw video resources and animation commands; 2) all C++ classes for monitor luminance calibration, gamma-correction, and support for custom video attenuator; 3) all C++ methods for generation of visual stimulus sequences, using both color look-up table and blit animation techniques; 4) GUI-based controls for debugging animation sequences in off-line mode.
Management and off-line analysis of DIVA databases
Previous versions of DIVA software used Matlab as an environment for offline data management and analysis. My responsibilities as data analyst included: 1) design and implementation of Matlab scripts for consolidating the DIVA file-system database into Matlab data structures optimized for rapid data transfer and analysis; 2) design and implementation of Matlab scripts for expert DIVA users to pool data across experimental sessions and perform regression analysis; 3) design and implementation of sofware for importing DIVA data into Microsoft Excel; 4) DIVA data visualization and graphical report generation using Excel for a variety of scientific and clinical studies.
