Curriculum Vitae

René J.V. Bertin

French version

Academic degrees

1986:
Propaedeutisch examen, Faculty of Biology, Universiteit Utrecht (UU), Utrecht, the Netherlands.

1990-02-26:
Doctoraal examen (master's degree¹), Faculty of Biology, UU, Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Subjects: theoretical biology, neuroethology, comparative physiology, medical physics:

autumn/winter 1987-1988:
Minor medical Physics (Prof. Dr Denier van der Gon, Faculty of Physics).
Subject: neuro-muscular control of human arm/hand movements.

autumn/winter 1988-1989:
Minor physiological physics (Prof. Dr J. Koenderink, Faculty of Physics).
Subject: modelling of the human motion detection system.

summer 1989- Feb. 1990:
Major theoretical neuroethology (Prof. Dr W.A. van de Grind, Neuroethology group, dept. of Comparative Physiology, Fac. Biology), part of the Utrecht Biophysics Institute, later the Helmholtz School for Autonomous Systems.
Subject: modelling of a visually-guided hypothetical animal.

Oct.-Dec. 1989:
Institut de Cibernètica, Polytecnica de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
Subject: edge reinforcement by relaxation labelling.
Obligatory theoretical component of the aforementioned major.
Financed in part by a grant from the Utrecht's Universiteit Fonds.
Supervisor: Prof. Dr Carme Torras

1994-06-06:
Promotie (PhD), UU, Utrecht, the Netherlands. Title of PhD thesis: "Natural smartness in hypothetical animals - of paddlers and glowballs". PhD supervisor: Prof. Dr W.A. van de Grind.
Subject: models of autonomous visually-guided navigation in hypothetical animals.

Professional experience

March,1990-1994:
OIO (Onderzoeker in Opleiding - PhD student) at the Neuroethology group, UU. Grant from the Foundation for Biophysics of the Netherlands Organisation for the Advancement of Pure Research (NWO).

March,1994-October, 1997:
Associated as post-doc with the Neuroethology group, UU.

October,1997 – March, 2000; March 2001 – August 2001:
Post-doc with the Laboratoire de Physiologie de la Perception et de l'Action (LPPA; Prof. A. Berthoz), on grants from the Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale; the EC Marie Curie Fellowship (TMR) and BioStim programmes. Associated with the HFSP project on visuo-vestibular interactions in the perception of ego-motion (RG71/96B).

Summer 2002 – 2005 [?]:
Post-doc in the same LPPA, working on the EC Quality of Life programme "EuroKinesis" headed by Dr. Werner Graf. A project studying visuo-vestibular sensorimotor integration in the elderly.

Educational experience

1988:
Assistantship "Controlsystems", Physics Department, UU.

1989:
Assistantship "Analysis of Complex Systems/Bioinformatics" (Prof. Dr P. Hogeweg).

1995-1997:
Assisting with the practical courses of the neuroethology group, addressing among others: human psychophysics, elementary electrophysiology and computer-simulations of neurone behaviour (using the NeuroSim software) for graduate students.

Relevant skills & techniques

General skills as a researcher in (theoretical) biology/biophysics as evident from the curriculum; modelling, human psychophysics.

Computer experience: maintenance and programming of Unix (HP9000, Silicon Graphics), PC (Windows, Linux) (and Macintosh) computers, using C, X11, Lisp:

PatchWorks: A simulation package written in C for my major and PhD project: the simulation of Paddlers and Glowballs. Set up in an "Individually Oriented" (OO) fashion. X11 graphics output, controllable through a toolkit language, and a simple GUI.

Toolkit: used by PatchWorks, including a parameter control/command language. This language is centred around a set of routines for I/O of arrays of numbers and/or algebraic expressions. Simple simulation flow construct used in PatchWorks is implemented with this toolkit.

XGraph: An extensively programmable 2D graphing/analysis programme. Various combinations of scatter, line and intensity plots relevant for scientific use, that can be completed with programmable drawing routines. Includes extended support for user-defined transformations, data-processing and data-generation. The arithmetic module is a further developed version of mentioned toolkit, including a custom parser-compiler for fast evaluation of (repeated) algebraic expressions (trees) and support for named scalars, arrays and procedures with parameter passing.

"Applied": Programmes for stimulus presentation (optic flow, using SGI Performer libraries, OpenGL and/or plain X11) and subject response measurement (requiring development of Unix drivers for a DrawingSlate II graphics tablet with a proprietary repackaged stylus, a Logitech HeadTracker/3D Mouse, and a proprietary simple motion-onset detector).

"Misc.": A utility for Assyriologists (my partner is one) who used a set of Type1 transcription fonts (the CunéiType1 family) on the Macintosh. These fonts had a very idiosyncratic encoding, making it impossible to use them on a PC, and thus also to even read documents created with them on a PC. I made another set of fonts, and a programme that does the necessary conversions of RTF files.

Personal Data

Name: René Jean Victor BERTIN

Date of birth: March 2^nd 1967, Utrecht

Unmarried with partner.

Address:

NB: the Lab address is where I last worked. I drop by there from time to time to collect my post. There is no email address here because I get enough SPAM as it is...

Publication list

R.J.V. Bertin: Natural smartness in hypothetical animals. Of paddlers and glowballs.
PhD Thesis, Utrecht University, 1994. ISBN 90-393-0742-3

R.J.V. Bertin: Experiments with Simulated Eyes, Brains an Hypothetical Animals. Of paddlers and glowballs.
Master's Thesis, Dept. of Comparative Physiology, Utrecht University, February 1990

R. Bertin, E. Veenhoven and W.A. van de Grind:Simulated animals in hypothetical environments.
Special issue on Biological Informatics of the Journal for Medical Informatics, vol. 19 nr. 4 1990. In Dutch.

R.J.V. Bertin and W.A. van de Grind: Hypothetical visually-guided animals. Of paddlers and glowballs.
UBI technical report, UBI-T-92.CP-079, 1992

R.J.V. Bertin: Design for a hypothetical deepsea animal: the paddle controller.
UBI technical report, UBI-M.93-CP-025, 1993

R.J.V. Bertin: Design for a hypothetical deepsea animal: the motion detection system.
UBI technical report, UBI-TR.93-CP-052, 1993

Bertin, R.J.V. and van de Grind, W.A. (1997): The influence of light/dark adaptation and lateral inhibition on phototaxic foraging. A hypothetical-animal study.
Adaptive Behavior, Vol. 5, No. 2, 141-167

Bertin, R.J.V. and van de Grind, W.A. (1998): Phototropic foraging of the archaepaddler, a hypothetical deep-sea species.
Artificial Life 4: 157-181

Bertin, R.J.V. and van de Grind, W.A.: Motion detection in a hypothetical animal: perception and application.
In preparation.

Bertin, R.J.V., Israël, I. and Lappe, M. (2000): Perception of two-dimensional, simulated ego-motion trajectories from optic flow.
Vision Research 40 #21: 2951-2971.

Bertin, R.J.V. and Israël, I.: Optic flow based perception of two-dimensional trajectories and the effects of a single landmark.
Perception, in press.

Bertin, R.J.V. and Berthoz, A.: Visuo-vestibular interaction in the reconstruction of travelled trajectories.
Exp. Brain Research 154 #1: 11-21

Conference presentations (peer reviewed):

Lappe, M., Israël, I. and Bertin R.J.V.: Path perception from optic flow.
Perception 1998; 27 (suppl.) (ECVP 1998).

Bertin, R.J.V., Israël, I. and Lappe, M.: Optic flow based ego-motion perception of 2D trajectories.
[ARVO Abstract]. Invest. Opthalmol. Vis. Sci. 1999; 40(4): S800. Abstract nr. 4209.

Bertin, R.J.V., Israël, I. and Lappe, M.: Perception of 2D simulated self-motion from optic flow.
Perception 1999; 28 (suppl.) (ECVP 1999)

Bertin, R.J.V. and Israël, I.:OPTIC FLOW BASED EGO-MOTION PERCEPTION OF PASSIVE 2D DISPLACEMENTS.
FENS 2000, Brighton 24-28 June, 2000.
Proceedings published in the European Journal of Neuroscience.

Bertin, R.J.V., Israël, I. and Berthoz, A.: Visuo-vestibular interaction(s) in the reconstruction of passively travelled manoeuvres.
Perception 2003; ECVP03 (suppl.) (ECVP 2003)

Bertin, R.J.V., Collet, C., Espié, S., Graf, W.: Objective measurement of simulator sickness and the role of visual-vestibular conflict situations: a study with vestibular-loss (a-reflexive) subjects
SfN 2004

Conference presentations (invited):

On paddlers and glowballs:
Animat Lab (Prof. J-A Meyer, ENS, Paris)
Artificial Life laboratory (Prof. R. Pfeifer, Zürich University)
Allgemeine Zoologie (Prof. K.P. Hoffmann, Bochum, Germany).

Perception of 2D simulated self-motion from optic flow:
Collège de France (public seminar; 2^nd December, 1999);
TNO-TM (Prof. W. Bles & A. Wertheim; 28^th March, 2000);
Neurobiologie (Prof. M. Egelhaaf, Bielefeld, Germany; 19^th October. 2000);
Sektion Neurophysiologie (Profs. Becker and Palm, Ulm, Germany; 25^th October, 2000).
Zoologisches Institut (Prof. A. Büschges, Köln, Germany; 25^th March, 2000).
DR Renault/Collège de France (A. Kemeny; 11^th January, 2002).

Miscellaneous

June 11th, 1994
Gloeiballen-eters uit de diepzee (Glowball-eaters from the deep sea) by Martijn van Calmthout. Article in the Volkskrant Wetenschapsbijlage (scientific section of 1 of the 2 Dutch "quality newspapers")

December, 1995
Opmerkelijk proefschrift: Peddelaars en gloeiballen (Remarkable PhD thesis: paddlers and glowballs) by Prof. W. Hoekstra, Utrecht University and the KNAW (Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences). Amsterdamse Boekengids #4.

Fall 1996:
The exposition on Tijd en Leven. Biofysica in Nederland (Time and Life. Biophysics in the Netherlands) in the Teylers Museum, Haarlem (Aug. 10th through Nov. 10th) featured an interactive demo of Paddlers and Glowballs.

Hobbies, interests and other extra-curricular activities:

Music, especially "ancient music": renaissance through classical periods, both passive and active (baroque violin player). Followed masterclasses with Enrico Gatti in Spa and Urbino. Some teaching experience (preparation of a baroque violin starter for her conservatory entry exam).

Photography (active & passive)

Gastronomy (also active… :) )

Member of the NIBI (Dutch Biologists' Institution), NVTB (Dutch Association for Theoretical Biology), the MCFA (Marie-Curie Fellowship Association). Chercheur invité, Fondation Alfred Kastler.