EVL faculty, assistant professor of Computer Science Fabio Miranda is joined by colleagues Jon Froehlich (University of Washington), Maryam Hosseini (Rutgers University) in organizing a 90-minute workshop on urban accessibility at the <a href="http://wp1066709.server-he.de/sdss2021/">2021 Spatial Data Science Symposium</a>. 
The interactive session entitled &ldquo;The Future of Global-Scale Spatial Data Collection and Analyses on Urban (in)Accessibility for People with Disabilities&rdquo; will bring together geographers, computer scientists, public health researchers, disability scholars, and beyond to talk about opportunities and challenges related to data collection, analysis, and tools for urban (in)accessibility. This virtual event is scheduled for Monday, December 13 12:15pm CT. 
<a href="https://www.airmeet.com/e/52c9e110-4848-11ec-a698-619a9d382b96">Register for SDSS</a>. 
Read more about this <a href="http://sdss2021.spatial-data-science.net/session_pdf/1-The%20Future%20of%20Urban%20Accessibility_%20Data%20Collection,%20Analytics,%20and%20Visualization.pdf">specific conference session</a>.

2021 Spatial Data Science Symposium

The SAGE team has been hard at work designing and developing SAGE3, the NSF-funded Smart Amplified Group Environment, which is a total rewrite of SAGE2. 
SAGE3 ALPHA RELEASE AND WEBSITE 
<a href="https://sage3.sagecommons.org/">SAGE3 alpha version for Linux, Windows and MacOS</a> is now available for download. For those who wish to test SAGE3 and provide our team with constructive feedback, go to the new SAGE3 website: (1) download the software and display client and (2) watch the &ldquo;How To&rdquo; video. Note: Users who tested earlier SAGE3 versions should delete old versions and use the latest one on the website. 
SAGE2 
For users who rely on SAGE2 for production (collaborative research, teaching, meetings), continue to use. We will answer support questions for the foreseeable future, but will not introduce new releases. The final release and documentation can be found on the <a href="https://sage2.sagecommons.org/">SAGE2 website</a>. 
SAGE3 / SAGE2 COMMUNITY USER FORUMS 
New SAGE3/SAGE2 Community user forums are now hosted on Slack; to join: 
<a href="https://tinyurl.com/sagecommunity">tinyurl.com/sagecommunity</a>. 
<ul>
<li>For SAGE2, subscribe to the sage2-support channel.</li>
<li>For SAGE3, subscribe to the sage3-support channel.</li>
</ul>

SAGE3 Alpha Version Available - Users: Please Help Test and Provide Feedback

The Goodman Theater New Stages Festival will showcase &ldquo;HUMMINGBIRD&rdquo; December 3-6, 2021to be held at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at UIC. 
&ldquo;HUMMINGBIRD&rdquo; is a multi-user theatrical performance merging live theater and virtual reality into an immersive experience that smashes together storytelling, gaming and virtual reality. Audiences go beyond observing the performance on a physical stage by meeting on a virtual stage inside the play itself, interacting with each other, the story, and the performers. 
The performance features a gutsy teen outsmarting her mother&rsquo;s narcissistic boss, surviving dangerous new technology in Hummingbird: a live, immersive adventure that transforms theatrical storytelling utilizing cutting-edge, virtual reality technology. 
Created by Daria Tsoupikova, Jo Catell, Sai Priya Jyothula, Andrew Johnson, Arthur Nishimoto and Lance Long with the support from the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), the University of Illinois Presidential Initiative to Celebrate the Impact of the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts Grant for Art Project. 
Read Jerald Pierce's December 2nd <a href="Jerald Pierce ">article covering the Goodman Theater New Stages Fesitval</a> in the Chicago Tribune.

Goodman Theater New Stages Announces Staging of &ldquo;HUMMINGBIRD&rdquo;

Former EVL student and graduate research assistant Elisa Tardini is recognized as a recipient of the Outstanding Thesis/Dissertation Award from the Graduate College at the University of Illinois at Chicago for her thesis entitled &ldquo;Recursive deep meta-reinforcement learning for personalized sequential dynamic treatment policies.&rdquo; This research focuses on a recursive deep meta-reinforcement learning approach to develop a model to prescribe an optimal treatment for patients.

2021 Outstanding Thesis/Dissertation Award to Elisa Tardini

EVL alumna (MFA 2000) and associate professor of Media Study at the University of Buffalo, Josephine Anstey continues her creative endeavors with the launch of her animated short, &ldquo;Pik and Etty in Progressive Taxation&rdquo; at the <a href="https://www.twitch.tv/yeswecannibal">Yes We Cannibal Salon</a> on November 21, 2021 at 5pm EST/4pm CST. 
Pik and Etty are economic commentators and re-enactors. With a rich cast of other clay figures they feature in short animations inspired by radical economist Thomas Piketty. Between 1900-1980 the &ldquo;ninety percent&rdquo; got richer and the &ldquo;ten percent&rdquo; got poorer. This <a href="https://yeswecannibal.org/encounters/meat-meet-35-josephine-anstey/">second Pik and Etty video</a> discusses the role of taxation in spreading the wealth. 
<a href="https://yeswecannibal.org/">Yes We Cannibal</a> is an anti-profit institution for experimental art and social practice. 
<a href="http://www.josephineanstey.com">Josephine Anstey&rsquo;s</a> career has been concept and project-driven, engaging with a wide variety of media practices and technologies. Experiments with narrative & dramatic forms and questions of identity & consciousness have been constant themes. Currently, she is making animations with clay figures Pik and Etty about economics and writing a scifi/ecofiction novel. Other projects include interactive drama, virtual and mixed reality, intermedia performance, video-art, radio documentary, web and prose fiction. Her VR and video works have shown widely in the US, in Europe, South America and Asia, and she has work in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Ars Electronica Center, Austria.

EVL Alumna Josephine Anstey Introduces Her Animated Short &ldquo;Pik and Etty in Progressive Taxation&rdquo;

EVL faculty member and Computer Science associate professor Liz Marai has been recognized as a 2020/2021 College of Engineering Teaching Award Recipient. The recipients of the teaching award are traditionally recognized for their excellence in teaching and their contributions to the curriculum. In addition, some of the awardees have rapidly adopted new technologies, modalities, and innovative thinking to achieve learning objectives as UIC transitioned to remote learning during the 2020 pandemic. 
Marai is among the following award recipients: 
BME: Dave Eddington, Dieter Klatt, Zhinan Wang 
CHE: Gang Cheng, Alan Zdunek 
CME: Ahmed Abokifa, Didem Ozevin, Bo Zou 
CS: Gonzalo Bello, Joe Hummel, Chris Kanich, Liz Marai, Natalie Parde, Shanon Reckinger 
ECE: Vahe Caliskan, Alan Feinerman, James Kosmach, Wenjing Rao, Renata Revelo 
MIE: Jonathan Komperda, Scott Reckinger, William Ryan, Yeow Siow, Jamison Szwalek 
Congratulations on this well-deserved honor!

Associate Professor Liz Marai Recognized as 2020/2021 COE Teaching Award Recipient

Thanks to new NSF support, beginning May 2020, the SAGE team has been hard at work designing and developing SAGE3, the Smart Amplified Group Environment. This new funding enables us to take SAGE2, introduced in 2013, to a new level, integrating Artificial Intelligence technologies with applications, visualization workflows and collaboration services. The team demonstrated an early version of SAGE3 at two webinars this summer, hosted by the CineGrid and PRAGMA organizations (information below). 
In the past, we have looked forward to seeing old users and meeting new users at the annual Supercomputing (SC) conference, though team members will not be attending this year. However, we continue to be hard at work on SAGE3 and are planning a number of exciting announcements for early December. 
1. A new SAGE3 website. 
2. An &ldquo;alpha release&rdquo; of SAGE3, which is an early, first release of the software, for user testing and feedback. 
3. A &ldquo;how-to&rdquo; video explaining current SAGE3 features. 
4. A new user forum hosted on Slack (tinyurl.com/sagecommunity). 
Given SAGE3 is in an early prototype phase, we expect our users to continue using SAGE2 for work, meetings, classes, etc. We will continue to answer support questions for SAGE2 for the foreseeable future, but will not introduce new releases. 
Stay tuned for SAGE3 news updates as they become available !! 
Maxine Brown 
SAGE team member 
<a href="mailto:maxine@uic.edu">maxine@uic.edu</a> 
<a href="https://youtu.be/PyE09TxwhPE">SAGE3 presentation at CineGrid, June 2021</a> 
<a href="https://youtu.be/UprsquVI6yo">SAGE3 presentation at PRAGMA, August 2021</a> 
SAGE3 is being developed by the Laboratory for Advanced Visualization and Applications (LAVA) and the Hawaii Data Science Institute (HI-DSI) at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UHM), the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), and the InfoVis Lab at Virginia Tech (VT). SAGE3 receives major funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), awards #2004014 (UHM), #2003800 (UIC) and #2003387 (VT). 
SAGE2 received major NSF support, award #ACI-1441963, to UHM and UIC. 
SAGE, SAGE2 and SAGE3 are trademarks of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees.

Exciting SAGE3 announcements planned for early December

EVL faculty member and professor of Design Daria Tsoupikova will represent UIC at the 6th Annual International CAAV Conference to be held as a hybrid event at Purdue University on November 1 - 4, 2021. Tspoupikova will participate in a panel discussion on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, (DEI) and Accessibility, scheduled Wednesday, November 3rd at 1:30 pm EST. 
Tsoupikova is currently involved in several DEI activities, in particular a long-term project with Chicago&rsquo;s Goodman Theater on a virtual-reality-based theater experience to inform some of Chicago&rsquo;s youth who live in disadvantaged neighborhoods on the value of theater by making it experiential and relevant. She will discuss her projects and experiences in affecting DEI.

Daria Tsoupikova Participates in CAAV 2021

EVL in collaboration with Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) hosted a satellite event for VIS2021 featuring a presentation from invited speaker Dr. Alan Keahey, VP for Data Science Visualization at Conversant Media, student lightning talks, a conference virtual watch party, followed by a reception near UIC on Tuesday, October 26, 2021. 
Due to COVID, the IEEE VIS conference was held virtually, complemented by local satellite in-person events to promote face-to-face networking between academic and professional VIS communities. 
Watch a <a href="https://youtu.be/mYEysIVb9Vc">video synopsis on EVLTube</a>. 
<a href="https://www.evl.uic.edu/vis-chicago/">More information on the IEEE VIS2021 Chicago Satellite Event.</a> 
This event is being organized by Fabio Miranda (EVL) and Victor Mateevisti (ANL).

EVL Hosts Satellite Event for IEEE VIS2021

For the last several years EVL faculty member and CS associate professor Liz Marai has been collaborating with the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and the University of Iowa to develop tools to help oncologists make better assessments for treating cancer patients. More recently, Liz Marai and co-investigator Xinhua Zhang also from UIC have been developing a scalable artificial intelligence system based on real patient data to serve as a decision support tool for physicians treating head and neck cancer patients. This research is funded by the National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute Award #3R01CA258827-01S1, entitled &ldquo;Longitudinal Spatial-Nonspatial Decision Support for Competing Outcomes in Head and Neck Cancer Therapy&rdquo; with principal investigators from UIC, the University of Texas, and the University of Iowa. 
See the full article in the <a href="https://engineering.uic.edu/about/coe-news/rise/fall-2021/better-ai-for-better-decisions/">College of Engineering&rsquo;s CEO News.</a>

2021 Spatial Data Science Symposium

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