Profile

Jasna Martinovic
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About Me:
I’m a university lecturer and live near Musselburgh with my husband.
I enjoy visiting historical monuments and going to concerts.
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I play cello in an orchestra and like to listen to live music (mainly indie and prog rock, jazz and classical).
I like to read science fiction and horror literature and watch movies. I also really like comedy programmes, current favourite is Derry Girls.
Finally, I also like to watch sports – mainly football and basketball, but any team sports will do really!
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The rich world of objects that we experience in everyday life is derived from basic signals about brightness and chromaticity taken in by our retina which subsequently get processed by structurally and functionally complex areas of our brain.
My work concerns the neural mechanisms that enable such synergistic processing of luminance and chromatic information. I am particularly interested in how colour and luminance signals feed into higher-level stages of perception as well as how they are sampled by visual attention.
For example, certain languages (e.g. Greek, Russian or Lithuanian) have 2 separate words for blue (e.g. in Russian sinij for dark blue and goluboj for light blue) rather than a single word – so how is their perception and cognition different from those who only have a single word, blue, and have to use relative qualifiers “light” and “dark” when talking about light and dark blues specifically?
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My Typical Day:
After breakfast, I start working – mainly from home now, unless I need to specifically go in for teaching or lab work. I like working from home because my husband and I can have our lunch break together and cook something nice. But it’s also nice if I’m in work, as I can treat myself to something different and I get to see my colleagues. I don’t like to get up early in the morning so do not usually start before 9.45am, but that also means I work till around 6pm. Then it’s time for dinner and hobbies or socialising!
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A working day of a university lecturer is quite diverse – I normally start by going through my emails, responding to queries from students or colleagues. I like to organise my work using ‘to do’ lists, so unless something urgent pops up in the emails, I’d normally get going with my tasks from the list – these can involve reading and commenting on student work, setting up new experiments, writing up existing research, or analysing data or preparing it for archiving. I also have many meetings, many of which are now online. Here, I give advice to my students, discuss their ongoing work and mentor them – or attend presentations and lab meetings from colleagues from other labs/departments.
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What I'd do with the prize money:
I’d spend the money on production of a pdf booklet for schools, allowing teachers to engage their students with STEM activities relating to human and animal perception, including hands-on activities and videos. I think this is a fun topic as it involves both psychology and biology.
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Education:
Josif Pancic elementary school, Belgrade, Yugoslavia
Third Belgrade high school, Belgrade, Serbia & Montenegro
Fort Dodge Senior High, Iowa, USA
Psychology undergraduate degree, University of Belgrade, Serbia & Montenegro
MSc in Neuroscience, University of Liverpool, UK
PhD in Experimental Psychology, University of Leipzig, Germany
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Qualifications:
High School Diploma (USA)
Undergraduate Psychology Degree (Serbia & Montenegro)
MSc (UK)
PhD (Germany)
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Work History:
Research Assistant, School of Psychology, University of Liverpool, UK
Postdoctoral researcher, School of Psychology, University of Liverpool, UK
Lecturer/Senior Lecturer, University of Aberdeen, UK
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Current Job:
Senior Lecturer, University of Edinburgh, UK
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My Interview
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How would you describe yourself in 3 words?
colour vision scientist
What did you want to be after you left school?
artist
Were you ever in trouble at school?
yes
Who is your favourite singer or band?
hawkwind
What's your favourite food?
spaghetti
If you had 3 wishes for yourself what would they be? - be honest!
to win the lottery, to stay healthy, and on a less selifish note for the world to sort itself out politically
Tell us a joke.
A husband sleeps in his bed in a hospital room while his wife sits by his side. A lady who's visiting his hospital room-mate comes in and remarks 'Your husband doesn't look too well'. The wife says "Yes, I know. I guess I married him for his charm and personality".
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