This Presidential Young Investigator Award is for support of Michael Leyton at Rutgers University. Leyton's research centers on perceptual organization. Perceptual organization is modeled as representing the environment as hierarchies of deterministic machines, i.e. as nested systems of control, where these hierarchies have a common mathematical structure, especially adapted to the function of planning. The sponsored work includes deeper investigations of the mathematical structure of this model, connections with information theory, and pilot studies of auditory perceptual organization. The significance of this research is that an understanding of perception, by a structured and principled approach, may contribute to major advances in computer systems capable of independently dealing with their environment by seeing, hearing, and other forms of perception. The Presidential Young Investigator Awards provide research funding to attract and support young researchers of the highest quality in the university environment.
