For the Supercomputing (SC20) Conference this year, a research community partnership was formed to design an international networking testbed using existing facilities, with several international extensions. Demonstrations and experiments were conducted prior to the conference with results discussed during a SC20 virtual forum. &ldquo;The Forum For Experiments and Demonstrations Showcasing Innovations In Large-Scale, Data-Intensive-Science Networking&rdquo; was organized by Research Consortium for Data-Intensive Science Networking to communicate: a) the motivation behind these experiments and demonstrations, b) their design, c) technologies used, d) results and e) future research in these areas. 
EVL senior research programmer, Lance Long participated to discuss EVL&rsquo;s research in Composable Infrastructure, specifically MRI: Acquisition of a Composable Platform as a Service Instrument for Deep Learning & Visualization (COMPaaS DLV) funded under NSF Award #CNS-1828265. Items discussed included the benefits of composable infrastructure, implementation for deep learning in an academic research environment, operating systems, dynamic workflows, orchestration middleware, current use cases and future work. 
Other participants included: Ciena Research Lab, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Naval Research Laboratory, iCAIR/Northwestern, StarLight, UCSD, FNAL, CalTech, SURFnet.

Lance Long Presents EVL&rsquo;s Composable Infrastructure Research at SC20

After six years at the helm as EVL director and twenty-six years as an associate director, Maxine Brown retires effective October 1, 2020. Over the years, Maxine has led and been instrumental in EVL&rsquo;s interdisciplinary research and development specializing in collaborative visualization, virtual reality, visual data science, and advanced computing and networking infrastructure. 
Most notable, during Maxine&rsquo;s tenure as director, EVL invented the CAVE2&trade; hybrid-reality environment, developed the Continuum Smart Environment and collaborative middle-ware SAGE&trade; scalable adaptive graphics environment, as well as the SAGE2&trade; scalable amplified group environment. In collaboration with Northwestern University and Argonne National Laboratory, Maxine managed the EVL team to create STAR TAP (1997), Ithe research and education network connection facility for international traffic located in downtown Chicago. STAR TAP was followed by StarLight (2001), which is still the largest research and engineering advanced networking facility in the world. 
Maxine&rsquo;s contributions to EVL are numerous and significant. She will be sorely missed by faculty, staff, students and many colleagues worldwide. Andrew Johnson, EVL director of research and professor of Computer Science assumes the role of EVL&rsquo;s interim director. 
<a href="https://engineering.uic.edu/news-stories/maxine-brown-director-of-uics-electronic-visualization-laboratory-retires-after-34-years/">Read the complete College of Engineering article.</a>

Maxine Brown EVL Director Retires

October 19, 2020 - - Fabio Miranda joins the EVL faculty as an assistant professor with the Department of Computer Science. Miranda interests include developing techniques that allow for the interactive visual analysis of large-scale data, combining methods from visualization, data management, machine learning, and computer graphics. Of particular concern is how visual data analytics can help address different problems cities face by integrating data on different resolutions and from different sources. 
Miranda&rsquo;s research in data science, human-computer interaction and visualization include: visual data analysis, data structures and indexing techniques for big data visualization, urban analytics, harnessing data sets of different types (images, land use information, 3D building geometry, etc.) to address concrete city problems, and machine learning. He has worked closely with domain experts from different fields, from urban planning to occupational therapy, and the outcome of these collaborations include not only research published in leading visualization, database, HCI, and AI venues, but also systems that were made available to experts in academia, industry, and government agencies. 
Miranda received his Ph.D. from New York University (2018).

Fabio Miranda Joins EVL Faculty

UIC Computer Science Professors Andy Johnson (PI) and Barbara Di Eugenio (co-PI) have been awarded a $333,000 NSF grant entitled &dquo;CHS: Small: Collaborative Research: Articulate+ - A Conversational Interface for Democratizing Visual Analysis&rdquo; project period October 2020 to September 2022. Dr. Moira Zellner, now of Northeastern University will also participate as co-PI on this grant. This project is part of a larger overall award of $500,000 that also includes Jason Leigh at University of Hawaii at Manoa. 
&ldquo;Articulate+&rdquo; continues EVL&rsquo; research in Natural Language Processing and Visualization also sponsored by NSF for the last 5+ years. See <a href="https://www.evl.uic.edu/entry.php?id=2522">Articulate+ - A Conversational Interface for Democratizing Visual Analysis</a> for more information on this project. 
NSF Award Number (FAIN): 2007257

NSF Grant &ldquo;CHS: Small: Collaborative Research: Articulate+&rdquo; Awarded

October 1 - - EVL Director of Research Andrew Johnson has been named Interim Director of EVL following Maxine Brown&rsquo;s retirement from UIC. Johnson now assumes the responsibility of heading EVL - overseeing EVL&rsquo;s overall mission in education, research, development, and technology transfer. 
For over 23 years, Johnson has been a valued EVL faculty member (Professor of Computer Science) and researcher who has focused upon interaction and collaboration using advanced visualization displays and the application of those displays to enhance discovery and learning. 
His areas of expertise include visualization, virtual and augmented reality, natural language processing, visual analytics, and high-performance networking. 
Over the years, Johnson has been instrumental in the development of EVL instrumentation and systems, including the Continuum smart environment, CAVE2&trade;, LambdaVision high-resolution tiled displays, LambdaTable tabletop touch system, GeoWall portable geoscience display environment, PARIS augmented reality and ImmersaDesk virtual reality systems. He has overseen the development of numerous visualization and virtual reality applications across diverse domain disciplines from science and engineering to the humanities and art. Johnson is a highly regarded mentor and educator to EVL&rsquo;s graduate students and undergraduates alike. 
Johnson retains his position as Director of Research while leading EVL&rsquo;s future initiatives and innovations as Interim Director.

Andrew Johnson Named Interim Director, EVL

EVL alumna (MFA 2004) Brenda Lopez Silva is among four UIC faculty members who have been selected as Fulbright scholars for 2020-21. They are among 800 U.S. faculty and professionals who will travel abroad through the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program, the flagship international educational exchange sponsored by the U.S. government. 
Brenda López Silva, a research and development specialist with the Learning Sciences Research Institute at UIC, will use her Fulbright award to teach in Portugal, where she will lead a course on problem-based learning for storytelling with the design of virtual reality environments. She is scheduled to teach at the Polytechnical Institute of Lisbon beginning in March 2021. 
Join us in congratulating Brenda on this well-deserved recognition! 
See the full article in <a href="https://today.uic.edu/four-uic-scholars-earn-fulbright-awards-for-research-teaching?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=today%2B09.29.20">UIC Today.</a>

EVL Alumna Brenda López Silva Earns Fulbright Award for Research, Teaching

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Professional University of Information and Management for Innovation (iU) announces a partnership with 7 international universities, including the University of Illinois at Chicago&rsquo;s (UIC) Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL). More specifically, Osamu Kamatani, Dean of iU&rsquo;s Faculty of Information and Management for Innovation, previously worked for Japan&rsquo;s NTT Network Innovation Laboratories, which had a 20-year research collaboration with UIC/EVL focused on advanced networking and collaboration. NTT was an early adopter of EVL&rsquo;s SAGE visualization and collaboration software and was involved in EVL-related advanced networking projects. iU will adopt SAGE2 and SAGE3, and will participate in the Global Research Platform (GRP), which is being organized by UIC/EVL, University of California San Diego (UCSD) and Northwestern University. The MOU formalizes and strengthens iU&rsquo;s collaborations with UIC/EVL. 
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 
iU of Japan announces partnership with 7 international universities 
Friday, August 21, 2020 - The Professional University of Information and Management for Innovation (&ldquo;iU&rdquo;) commenced its first year of operation on April 1st 2020, and has now reached comprehensive partnership agreements with the following seven global prominent schools: The University of California, San Diego (UCSD); The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC); The University of Sheffield; Raffles University Malaysia; The National University of Singapore; Nikola Tesla Graduate School in the U.K.; and the Federal University of Technology Akure (FUTA), Ondo State, Nigeria, with ongoing efforts for additional international collaborations. 
iU will continue to actively collaborate with major universities in Japan and abroad, with the aim to realize a &ldquo;Global University Network,"&rdquo; representing an intellectual hub for the IT and business industries centered around iU. 
Specifically, in addition to the exchange of students and faculty members and the implementation of joint research, the objectives are as follows: 
　1. A &ldquo;passport&rdquo; system that allows classes at partner universities and recognition of course credits 
　2. Joint development for research of new ventures and new products within a joint strategic special zone 
　3. Establishment of a special visa zone for international students 
　4. International collaborative research on the fields of eSports, super education, super sports, anime, otaku, etc. 
　5. Entrepreneurship support and Human Capital development 
The &ldquo;Global University Network&rdquo; advocated by iU, includes alliances with overseas universities. Through collaboration with each institution, iU will strive to develop and promote international joint lectures, joint experiments, implementation of various IT technologies, and joint research through exchanges of students and faculty from partner universities. iU will also work closely with prominent companies in Japan and overseas that support these activities. 
<a href="https://www.i-u.ac.jp/news/detail.php?id=199">Read the entire press release.</a> 
For Further Information, please contact: 
PR division 
Professional University of Information and Management for Innovation 
TEL: +81356551555 E-mail: <a href="mailto:info@i-u.ac.jp">info@i-u.ac.jp</a> 
For UIC/EVL collaboration information, contact Maxine Brown: <a href="mailto:maxine@uic.edu">maxine@uic.edu</a>

iU of Japan announces partnership with 7 international universities

Researchers at University of Hawai&rsquo;i at Mānoa, University of Illinois Chicago, and Virginia Tech were awarded a $5 million National Science Foundation grant to synergize two complementary technologies - large-scale data visualization and artificial intelligence - to create the Smart Amplified Group Environment (SAGE3) open-source software. 
SAGE, soon to be on its third iteration as SAGE3, is the most widely used big-data visualization and collaboration software in the world. 
SAGE and SAGE2 are software to enable data-rich collaboration on high-resolution display walls. SAGE2 moved SAGE into cloud computing and SAGE3 ushers in the inclusion of artificial intelligence. 
Principal investigator Jason Leigh is a computer and information science professor at University of Hawai&rsquo;i at Mānoa and the inventor of SAGE. SAGE is software to enable teams of collaborators to work together with data in the form of data visualizations. 
SAGE3&rsquo;s novel interactive artificial intelligence methods will learn from human analytic activity and use the knowledge gained to assist people in synthesizing relevant data connections that lead to new hypotheses and findings, explained Chris North, a professor of computer science in the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech and a co-principal investigator. 
Scientists analyzing their data in SAGE3 will collaborate with each other and with artificial intelligence through large interactive visualization spaces, such as multi-monitor workstations, tiled display walls, and virtual reality headsets. 
Leigh said the applications for the SAGE3 technology are endless. &ldquo;It will be tremendously useful to enable evidence-based response during natural disasters and events like the current COVID-19 pandemic,&rdquo; Leigh said. 
He created SAGE in collaboration with researchers from the University of Illinois Chicago 16 years ago. They&rsquo;ve since further developed SAGE and SAGE2 with 15 years of research funding by the National Science Foundation. 
&ldquo;This new funding provides us with an opportunity to take SAGE to the next level - providing smart end-user services to amplify users&rsquo; productivity, making commercial and open-source artificial intelligence solutions available that can autonomously and transparently analyze data while continually learning and improving through user interactions,&rdquo; said Maxine Brown, director of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois Chicago. Brown has been involved with SAGE since its inception. 
&ldquo;SAGE3 also supports resource orchestration services that integrates these smart services with applications, workflows, and visualizations and collaboration services, and makes it easy for users to connect to local and remote display walls and computational systems and to securely run reproducible work models,&rdquo; explained Luc Renambot, Electronic Visualization Laboratory associate research professor and co-architect with Leigh of the SAGE software since its inception. 
&ldquo;As a &rsquo;co-pilot&rsquo; to individuals or teams who are trying to examine large datasets, SAGE3 will provide a discovery pathway from data sources to human insights and knowledge, which is currently a gap in the e-Science pipeline that the National Science Foundation has called the &rsquo;&ldquo;missing middle,&rsquo;&rdquo; said Mahdi Belcaid, assistant professor at University of Hawai&rsquo;i at Mānoa and the artificial intelligence co-principal investigator on the project. 
According to the researchers, SAGE3 will make artificial intelligence technologies broadly accessible, not just a privilege for the technically savvy. North said the project will conduct user-centered design research studies to ensure usability of this novel combination of data visualization and artificial intelligence in SAGE3. 
Through seed funds provided by Virginia Tech&rsquo;s Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology and the Hawai&rsquo;i Data Science Institute, North had the opportunity to work side-by-side with Leigh in the Laboratory for Advanced Visualization & Applications at the University of Hawai&rsquo;i during the spring 2020 semester. This in-person exchange, and numerous video-teleconferences with the Electronic Visualization Laboratory, was essential to helping plan and initiate the five-year SAGE3 collaboration, noted North. SAGE3 will serve the Institute&rsquo;s missions of bringing together computer scientists, domain scientists, engineers, artists, and designers to tackle some of the world&rsquo;s most complex challenges. 
The user base goes well beyond scientists. Leigh said he sees SAGE3 helping teachers use and share artificial intelligence concepts to future generations of students. And for those who work in creative media, such as filmmakers and video game designers, Leigh envisions it being a highly visual tool to brainstorm new ideas and analyze all forms of digital media to see how they relate to each other, which ones were most popular and why. 
Written by Jenise L. Jacques, Virginia Tech 
For further information or queries, contact Maxine Brown <a href="mailto:maxine@uic.edu">maxine@uic.edu</a>. 
Also, see <a href="https://cs.uic.edu/news-stories/data-visualization-gets-artificial-intelligence-boost-with-5-million-nsf-grant/">UIC&rsquo;s Computer Science News Story</a>.

Announcing SAGE3: Data visualization gets artificial intelligence boost with $5 million NSF grant

EVL PhD candidate Juan Trelles Trabucco has been recognized among the UIC Computer Science Department&rsquo;s 2020 Outstanding Graduate TAs. This award typically recognizes graduate TAs for their work over an entire year, but given Juan&rsquo;s stellar performance during the spring semester, and especially during the pandemic, Juan is being duly recognized for his contributions to courses CS426 and CS529. 
&ldquo;Juan&rsquo;s TA performance in CS426 was beyond spectacular. The course had 60 students enrolled and made use of a variety of technologies. Yet with Juan&rsquo;s help, we had a flawless transition to online teaching, when the pandemic lockout was instituted.&rdquo; 
CS associate professor Elisabeta Marai was the instructor for both courses. CS426: Video Game Design and Implementation covers tools and techniques for the design and implementation of 3D interactive video games. CS529: Visual Data Science is an introduction to key design principles and techniques for interactively visualizing and analyzing data in data science. 
In addition, to the usual TA assignments of tutoring students, grading papers, etc. assisting in the transition of these courses to an online virtual platform posed additional challenges, and makes Juan truly deserving of this recognition. 
Please join us in congratulating Juan!

EVL PhD Candidate Juan Trelles Trabucco Receives CS 2020 Outstanding TA Award

Good Gamer 
Pearl Shin <a href="https://emails.uofi.uic.edu/newsletter/2432950.html">(UIC Magazine, Spring 2020)</a> Lindsay Grace, MFA &rsquo;09 - Knight Chair of Interactive Media at the University of Miami (Fla.) School of Communication - has turned his passion for video games into a career, and in the process, created innovative games with a positive social impact. 
WHAT LED YOU TO GAME DESIGN? 
I had an off-again/on-again romance with games until I became a web developer. Then I really started to see the long-term potential for games to offer positive social impact and engagement. 
HOW DID YOUR TIME AT UIC CONTRIBUTE TO YOUR WORK? 
I took my first game course at UIC&rsquo;s Electronic Visualization Lab. I wasn&rsquo;t the best student, but I was eager, and I found UIC to be an invigorating environment, especially when you mixed arts-focused students and faculty with engineers and computer scientists, as EVL did. 
IN WHAT WAYS DO YOU THINK GAMES HAVE A SOCIETAL IMPACT? 
Play helps us learn; it helps us be creative and serves many other functions. Games help shape our play, by giving us new challenges and frameworks. So, when we create educational games, we tap into the innate propensities of play to produce social good. I find it rewarding when teaching opens whole new perspectives for my students - the moment they go from media consumers to producers and critics. They can peek behind the curtain, understand how things work and identify how they can be improved.

Lance Long Presents EVL’s Composable Infrastructure Research at SC20

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