After obatining a joint PhD in Brain & Cognitive Sciences and Computer Science at the University of Rochester in 2008, I am currently a postdoc at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies working with Jochen Triesch in the theoretical neuroscience group and a lecturer at the Goethe University, Frankfurt. My research interests revolve around the distinction between 'looking' and 'seeing' and how this distinction relates to vision in goal directed behavior. To this end, I am currently using mainly three methodologies: tracking of human eye movements during execution of extended visuomotor tasks in natural and virtual environments, building models of these tasks and implementing algorithms that learn how to solve these tasks in virtual agents, developing learning algorithms with an emphasis on the learning of sensory representations for actions.

If you are looking for some of my other activities, please follow this link.

Conference Talks:

C. A. Rothkopf, T. H. Weisswange, J. Triesch: 'Learning independent causes in natural images explains the spacevariant oblique effect', IEEE 8th International Conference on Development and Learning, June 5-7, 2009, Shanghai, China

T. H. Weisswange, C. A. Rothkopf, T. Rodemann, J. Triesch: 'Can reinforcement learning explain the development of causal inference in multisensory integration?', IEEE 8th International Conference on Development and Learning, June 5-7, 2009, Shanghai, China

T. H. Weisswange, C. Rothkopf, J. Triesch: 'A walk through the woods explains the space variant oblique effect', COSYNE - Computational and Systems Neuroscience, February 26-March 1, 2009, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

C. A. Rothkopf, D. H. Ballard: 'Human eye movements correlate with intrinsic reward structure in natural visuomotor tasks', 8th annual meeting of the Vision Science Society, May 9-14, 2008, Naples, Florida, USA. (Student travel award)

M. Burigo, C. A. Rothkopf: 'Are you expecting a change? Advantages in focusing on the details', ESCOP - European Society for Cognitive Psychology, August 29-September 1, 2007, Marseille, France

C. A. Rothkopf, D. H. Ballard: 'Credit assignment with Bayesian reward estimation', COSYNE - Computational and Systems Neuroscience, March 22-25, 2007, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

J. Fiser, R. N. Aslin, A. Lathrop, C. Rothkopf,  J. Markant: 'An infants' eye view of the world: Implications for learning in natural contexts', International Conference on Infant Studies, June 19-23, 2006, Kyoto, Japan

C. A. Rothkopf, D. H. Ballard, B. T. Sullivan, K. de Barbaro : 'Bayesian modeling of task dependent visual attention strategy in a virtual reality environment', 5th annual meeting of the Vision Science Society, May 6-11, 2005, Sarasota, Florida, USA

D. H. Ballard, C. Rothkopf: 'Learning visual representations with projection pursuit', 5th annual meeting of the Vision Science Society, May 6-11, 2005, Sarasota, Florida, USA

C. A. Rothkopf, J. B. Pelz: 'Head movement estimation for wearable eye tracker', Proceedings of the Eye Tracking Research & Application Symposium, ETRA 2004, San Antonio, Texas, USA, ACM, 2004

Conference Posters:

C. A. Rothkopf, D. H. Ballard: 'Human intrinsic visuomotor rewards in obstacle avoidance', 32nd European Conference on Visual Perception, August 24-28, 2009, Regensburg, Germany

C. A. Rothkopf, T. H. Weisswange, J.Triesch: 'A walk through the woods explains the space variant oblique effect', 9th annual meeting of the Vision Science Society, May 8-13, 2009, Naples, Florida, USA

C. A. Rothkopf, D. H. Ballard: 'Relating contrast statistics at fixation location to navigational control law', 7th annual meeting of the Vision Science Society, May 11-16, 2007, Sarasota, Florida, USA

C. A. Rothkopf, D. H. Ballard: 'Relating contrast statistics at fixation location to navigational control law', 7th annual meeting of the Vision Science Society, May 11-16, 2007, Sarasota, Florida, USA

J. B. Pelz, C. A. Rothkopf: 'Task dependence of space-time statistics at point of gaze revealed by eye tracking in natural wooded environment', 7th annual meeting of the Vision Science Society, May 11–16, 2007, Sarasota, Florida, USA

J. B. Pelz, C. A. Rothkopf: ' Task dependence of image statistics at the point of gaze in a natural wooded environment', COSYNE - Computational and Systems Neuroscience, March 22-25, 2007, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

C. Rothkopf, D. Ballard, M. Hayhoe: 'Credit assignment in visuo-motor behaviors using a consumable global reward signal', Society for Neuroscience Annual Meeting, October 14 - October 18, 2006, Atlanta, Georgia, USA