Associate Professor
Director, Munsell Color Science Laboratory
Head, Integrated Sciences Academy
College of Science
Rochester Institute of Technology
See a video of my June 2022 Keynote for the AIC Conference, "Color in Layers: From Pepper’s Ghost to Augmented Reality"
Augmented reality (AR) utilizes see-through displays to mix virtual objects into real-world scenes. The optical blending of virtual and real stimuli is apparently interpreted visually with an understanding of transparency. AR users can attend to the AR foreground, discounting to some extent the bleed-through of the background elements. Alternatively, they can attend to real-world objects manipulated by AR overlays, partially discounting their influence.
Aiming to build a color appearance model for optical see-through AR systems, this project involves psychophysical experiments, optical measurements, and models of the human visual system and its responses.
Recently Michael earned a prestigious NSF CAREER award to support this work for the period 2020 - 2025: Project Info.
Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) have displaced most other lighting technologies in use today due to their energy efficiency and flexibility.
Multi-channel or multi-primary LED systems offer tunable spectral properties that may be optimized for different applications, such as to enhance object colors, to influence circadian rhythms, or to study observer metamerism. Michael has designed three LED lighting systems for this type of research.
Such LED systems are also capable of smooth temporal transitions, useful for atmosphere or scene-setting, circadian lighting, etc. Murdoch has pursued pioneering research on the understudied topic of perception of rate of change of color and the adaptation to temporally-dynamic colored lighting.
Advanced display systems include high dynamic range (HDR), wide color gamut (WCG), organic light-emitting diode (OLED), and head-mounted displays (HMD).
Murdoch addressed perceptual optimization of display systems in his PhD dissertation at Eindhoven University of Technology (in connection with Philips Research). This work continues at RIT as display technologies continue to develop.
Recent research projects have addressed visibility of near-black differences in OLEDs, visual search with foreground/background color combinations, observer metamerism between display technologies, and the inter-relationships between luminance range, chromaticity gamut, and observer metamerism.
Extended-reality technologies (like VR, AR, MR, XR...) share an immersiveness that removes the "frame" that many display- and computer-based media have traditionally necessitated. Thus, Frameless Labs: a group of faculty from many disciplines at RIT and University of Rochester who share an interest in immersive technologies. We share tools, discuss commonalities, inspire multi-disciplinary work, and create a community of interest.
The Frameless Symposium is an annual conference at RIT's MAGIC Center that includes technical talks and papers, demos of technology and games, art installations, and live performances using XR technologies.
Michael was a founding member of Frameless Labs and has served on the Program Committee for the Symposium every year since 2016.
The IS&T hosts the annual Color and Imaging Conference (CIC), the premier international meeting of color science experts. Michael has served as General Chair for CIC 2017 in Lillehammer, Norway, as well as Program co-Chair, Short-Course co-Chair, and Journal-first Lead Associate Editor in other years.
Michael and his students have presented multiple papers and posters at CIC and Michael has taught short courses at the conference.
The ISCC is a national color-focused community that brings together science, art, industry, and education through conferences and online programming.
Murdoch has served on the ISCC Board of Directors and is helping plan future events and webinars. He served on the Program Committee of the ISCC/AIC Munsell Centennial Symposium in Boston in 2018 and is currently planning the 2023 Color Impact Conference to be held in Rochester, NY.
Sara Leary, BS 2018 (Imaging Science; Capstone project): Manipulating Object Lightness in Augmented Reality
Nargess Hassani, PhD 2019: Modeling Color Appearance in Augmented Reality now at Apple
Yongmin Park, PhD 2021: Modeling Perceptual Trade-offs for Designing HDR Displays now at Meta
Lili Zhang, PhD 2021: Lightness, Brightness, and Transparency in Augmented Reality now at Meta
Rema Amawi, PhD 2022: Effect of Drug Colors on Human Expectation and Perception now at RIT Dubai
Martin Hegnum Johannessen, Kjetil Karstensen Indrehus, Sander Tøkje Hauge, BS 2024 (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, BS Thesis): User Face Tracking for Unreal Interface
Iver Lieberg Stieng, Oliver Tangen, Teemu Johannes Vikøren, & Ulrik Bjørkum Hesmyr, BS 2025 (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, BS Thesis): Human Perception in Augmented Reality: Developing a Tool for Experimental Research
Parker Mei, BS 2025 (Imaging Science; Capstone project): Watts the Difference: Revisiting Tone Mapping for Power Efficiency
Abby Weymouth, MS 2022, PhD 2025: Chromatic Adaptation in Real and Augmented Reality
Zilong Li, PhD 2025: Color and Realism in Augmented Reality
Tucker Downs, PhD 2026: Color in Augmented Reality
Yuan Tian, PhD 2026: Gloss Perception
Christopher Thorstenson, MS 2017 (Advisor: Mark Fairchild)
Antara Mishra, MS 2018 (Computer Science; Advisor: Joe Geigel)
Rik Spieringhs, MS 2019 (Eindhoven University of Technology)
Jeremy Miller, MS 2020 (Air Force Institute of Technology; Advisor: Michael Miller)
Fu Jiang, PhD 2020 (Advisor: Mark Fairchild) High Dynamic Range (HDR) Display Perception
Adi Robinson, PhD 2021 (Advisor: Mark Fairchild) Medical Grade Displays in Radiation Oncology
Xiangzhen Kong, PhD 2021 (Eindhoven University of Technology)
Anku, PhD 2021 (Advisor: Susan Farnand) Preferred Rendering of Memory Colors
Yue Yuan, MS 2021 (Advisor: Mark Fairchild)
Luke Hellwig, PhD 2023 (Advisor: Mark Fairchild) Novel Psychophysics of Cognitive Color Appearance Phenomena
Hao Xie, PhD 2023 (Advisor: Mark Fairchild) Representing Color as Multiple Independent Scales
Thain-Gi Oo, MS 2023 (Applied and Computational Mathematics; Advisor: Nathan Cahill) Optimizing Multi-Primary LED Intensities
Chowdhury Sadman Jahan, PhD 2024 (Imaging Science; Advisor: Carl Salvaggio) Transfer learning across domains and sensing modalities
Eddie Pei, PhD 2025 (Advisor: Susan Farnand)
Andrea Avendano Martinez, MS 2025 (Advisor: Christopher Thorstenson)
Saeedeh Abasi, PhD 2026 (Advisor: Mark Fairchild)