We are pleased to announce that the recipient of the first Smith-Pokorny Award (2026) is Dr. Takuma Morimoto. The award, which was established by ICVS to recognise scientists at an early stage of their careers, was named in honour of the outstanding contributions of Vivianne C. Smith and Joel Pokorny to the field of colour vision.
Dr. Morimoto received his DPhil in Experimental Psychology from the University of Oxford in 2020, following a Master of Engineering degree from the Tokyo Institute of Technology (2015) and Bachelor of Engineering from Chiba University (2013). He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford.
Dr. Morimoto’s 30+ publications demonstrate a breadth of interests, technical skills, and creativity, covering topics in c
olour constancy, material perception, hyperspectral imaging, illumination measurements and modelling, colour categorisation, and neural networks. His reach across the international colour vision research community encompasses impressive collaborations with prominent groups in not only the UK and Japan, but also Giessen (Germany) and Braga (Portugal), the latter formed during his tenure as a Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oxford (2020-2025). Dr. Morimoto has also served the colour vision community through organizational and teaching assistance at the ICVS summer school, committee membership in the CIE and Optica, and feature editorship for a special issue on Colour Vision (JOSA-A).
The ICVS is delighted to confer on Dr. Takuma Morimoto the Smith-Pokorny Award for his outstanding scientific contributions to date, and to recognize also his exceptional promise of future achievements in colour vision research. The presentation will be made at the forthcoming ICVS meeting in Brighton, UK ( 14th-18th August 2026).