I am passionate about my overarching research goal: providing robots with perceptual abilities that allow safe, intelligent interactions with humans in real-world environments. To develop these perceptual abilities, I believe it is useful to study the principles of the human, animal and insect visual systems. I use these principles to develop new computer vision and machine learning algorithms and validate their effectiveness in intelligent robotic systems. I am enthusiastic about this forward/reverse engineering approach, which combines concepts from computer science and engineering with those from biology and social sciences, as it offers the dual benefit of uncovering principles inherent in the animal visual system, as well as applying these principles to its artificial counterpart. I am a recipient of two best thesis awards and two best poster awards and have acquired grants in excess of 400,000 AUD.