MFA Graduate, 2004

Brenda Lopez Silva

PhD Graduate, 2000 (Computer Science)

Paul Neumann

MS Graduate, 2000

Arkadius Koziol

PhD Graduate, 2008

Robert Kooima

Visting Research Scholar

Yi Chen

MFA Graduate, 2010

Julio Obelleiro

PhD Graduate, 2013

Sungwon Nam

PhD Graduate, 2012

Yiwen Sun

MS Graduate, Learning Technologies Group

Brian Uphoff

Undergrad Student, Web REU

Brad Phillips

MS Graduate, 2011

Ed Kahler

PhD Graduate, 2023 MS Graduate, 2014

Arthur Nishimoto

PhD Graduate, 2011

Muxuan Wang

MS Gradudate, 2008 PhD Graduate, 2017

Alessandro Febretti

PhD Student Research Specialist, 2011-2013 MFA Graduate, 2011

JD Pirtle

MFA Graduate, 2011

Brittany Ransom

Research Experience Undergraduate

Jenny Kinahan

Research Experience Undergraduate, 2009-2012

Jakub Misterka

Research Experience Undergraduate, 2010-2011

Todd Richard Silvia

Karan Chakrapani

Emeritus Senior Scientist Space Science and Engineering Center University of Wisconsin-Madison

Bill Hibbard

MS Graduate, 1992

Lewis Siegel

MS Graduate, 2012

Brad McGinnis

MS Graduate, 2013

Qin Li

Paul Grenning

MS Graduate, 2014

Alex Simes

EVL Collaborator

Steve Heminover

MS Graduate, 2103

Vaibhav Govilkar

MS Graduate, 2018

Shi Yin

MS Graduate, 2017

Kyle Almryde

EVL participates at SC|05 as an OptIPuter partner in the National LambdaRail booth (#6003), showcasing hardware and software developed with major support from the National Science Foundation. 

H A R D W A R E 

<a href="http://www.evl.uic.edu/cavern/optiputer/geowall2.html">GeoWall2</a> 
The GeoWall2 is a portable, high-resolution (8000 x 3600 pixels) 15- tile LCD system powered by a 10-node OptIPuter 64bit cluster. Applications of GeoWall2 include the visualization of large remote sensing data, scientific volume rendering imagery, mapping, seismic interpretation, museum exhibits and other applications that require a large collaborative screen area. 

The GeoWall2 was designed and built at the University of Illinois at Chicago&rsquo;s Electronic Visualization Laboratory with funding from the National Science Foundation. The GeoWall2 on display at SC|05 is on loan from OptIPuter partner USGS / EROS Data Center in Sioux Falls, SD. 

Varrier Auto-Stereoscopic Virtual Reality Display 
Daniel J. Sandin, Thomas A. DeFanti, Jinghua Ge, Javier Girado, Robert Kooima and Tom Peterka 
Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) 
Contact: dan @ evl.uic.edu 

Varrier is a high-resolution, head-tracked autostereoscopic display system that produces a virtual reality immersive experience without requiring the user to wear any encumbrances. Varrier refers to both the display system, and the computational method used to produce the autostereoscopic imagery through a combination of a physical parallax barrier and a virtual barrier. Camera-based head tracking with artificial neural networks is used to track user head position at interactive frame rates. 

Varrier was designed and built at University of Illinois at Chicago&rsquo;s Electronic Visualization Laboratory with funding from the National Science Foundation. It is a 35-panel tiled display that produces a wide field of view, head-tracked virtual reality experience. The Varrier system at SC|05 is a single 30 panel display. 

Networked and local application demonstrations include: a U.S. Geological Survey topological map of Crater Lake; a live 3D teleconferencing session from EVL in Chicago, Illinois; Mars Rover data; photon-beam tomography by Marcus Thi&eacute;baux, Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California; and animated microscopy imaging by Steve Lamont, National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research, University of California, San Diego. 

S O F T W A R E 

<a href="http://www.evl.uic.edu/cavern/sage">Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment (SAGE)</a> 
Luc Renambot, Jason Leigh, Byungil Jeong, Andrew Johnson, Nicholas Schwarz and Venkatram Vishwanath 
Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) 

The Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment (SAGE) is a graphics streaming architecture for supporting collaborative scientific visualization environments with potentially hundreds of megapixels of contiguous display resolution is a distributed computing architecture that supports easy migration of visualization tools between computing environments. SAGE addresses both heterogeneity and scalability by decoupling graphics rendering from graphics display, and uses high bandwidth networking to bridge them. 

The SAGE architecture consists of numerous rendering resources connected over a high-speed network to a scalable frame buffer. The hardware is built from commodity hardware components that can be arranged to scaled to manage any resolution of display screen. Using SAGE, multiple datasets applications can be visualized simultaneously on a large tiled display. This is achieved by executing multiple instances of an application, then comparing lets the user compare and analyze multiple the datasets, or multiple views of the same dataset. SAGE application windows can be moved, resized and overlapped like any standard desktop window manager. 

SAGE streaming capabilities currently enable users to visualize remotely stored datasets from several distributed clusters over wide area networks and display them on the local tiled display. SAGE is now being extended to support distance collaboration with multiple endpoints, by streaming pixels to all the participants using either traditional router-based multicasting or photonic multicasting. This will allow, once the multicasting capability is added to SAGE, distributed collaborators using different displays to effectively share the same visualization data without wasting network bandwidth. 

EVL is also developing LambdaRAM middleware, new streaming protocols and real-time compression modules to improve SAGE&rsquo;s pixel streaming capabilities. Ultimately, SAGE will be extended to stream other graphics data types to support a wider range of applications, and SAGE applications will rely on LambdaRAM to access large datasets. 

LambdaRAM allows applications to seamlessly access very large remote datasets over high-bandwidth networks, and overcome the large latencies that are characteristic of long haul networks. LambdaRAM harnesses the memory of multiple distributed wide-area clusters and presents a single global memory abstraction to the application. It also employs aggressive pre-fetching heuristics based on access patterns to cache data for applications. This helps tremendously to overcome latency - a critical requirement in large remote data visualization and data mining. 

At SC|05, SAGE is supporting the following applications on the GeoWall2: HDTV live streaming from EVL in Chicago; JuxtaView (UCSD/ NCMIR microscopy data and USGS Urban Area datasets); Magic Carpet (New Orleans, San Diego and Blue Marble datasets); and UIUC / NCSA and EVL HD animations.

GeoWall2

EVL Showcases Research in NLR Exhibit at SC &rsquo;05

RESEARCH EXHIBITS 
Calit2 and Center for Earth Observations and Applications (booth 6107) 
Transforming Scientific Discovery Through Telecom and IT 
UCSD Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Center for Earth Observations and Applications 
Contact: Atul Nayak, anayak @ ucsd.edu 

OptIPuter Education &amp; Outreach 
UCSD Scripps Institution of Oceanography 
Contact: Debi Kilb, dkilb @ epicenter.ucsd.edu 

Dutch Consortium Booth (booth 2444) 
Technology for Optical Pixel Streaming (TOPS) 
SARA Computing and Networking Services (The Netherlands) 
Contact: Paul Wielinga, wielinga @ sara.nl, Axel Berg, axel @ sara.nl 

Resource Brokering: Your Ticket into NetherLight 
University of Amsterdam, Advanced Internet Research Group (The Netherlands) 
Contact: Cees de Laat, delaat @ science.uva.nl 

StarPlane (poster) 
University of Amsterdam, Advanced Internet Research Group (The Netherlands) 
Contact: Cees de Laat, delaat @ science.uva.nl 

National Center for Data Mining (booth 2430) 
Exploring Remote and Distributed Data Using Teraflows 
University of Illinois at Chicago, National Center for Data Mining 
Northwestern University, International Center for Advanced Internet Research 
CERN 
Kyushu Institute of Technology (Japan) 
Queen&rsquo;s University (Canada) 
University of Amsterdam, Advanced Internet Research Group (The Netherlands) 
Contact: Robert Grossman, grossman @ uic.edu, Joe Mambretti, j-mambretti @ northwestern.edu 

From Federal Express to Lambdas: Transporting SDSS Data Using UDT 
University of Illinois at Chicago, National Center for Data Mining 
Johns Hopkins University 
Chinese Academy of Science, Department of Astronomy (China) 
Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (Korea) 
Max Plank Institut fuer Plasmaphysik (Germany) 
National Astronomical Observatory (China) 
University of Tokyo, School of Science (Japan) 
Contact: Robert Grossman, grossman @ uic.edu 

National Center for Supercomputing Applications (booth 1639) 
High Definition Stereo Streaming 
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, National Center for Supercomputing Applications 
University of Illinois at Chicago, Electronic Visualization Laboratory 
Contact: Donna Cox, cox @ ncsa.uiuc.edu, Bob Patterson, robertp @ ncsa.uiuc.edu 

National LambdaRail (booth 6003) 
Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment 
University of Illinois at Chicago, Electronic Visualization Laboratory 
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, National Center for Supercomputing Applications 
SARA Computing and Networking Services (The Netherlands) 
UCSD National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research 
Contact: Jason Leigh, spiff @ evl.uic.edu, Luc Renambot, luc @ evl.uic.edu 

Personal Varrier 
University of Illinois at Chicago, Electronic Visualization Laboratory 
Contact: Dan Sandin, dan @ uic.edu 

Nortel Networks (booth 540) 
International Optical Multicast 
Northwestern University, International Center for Advanced Internet Research 
Nortel Networks 
SARA Computing and Networking Services 
SURFnet6 
University of Amsterdam, Advanced Internet Research Group (The Netherlands) 
Contact: Joe Mambretti, j-mambretti @ northwestern.edu 

The Virtual Machine* 
Nortel Networks 
University of Amsterdam, Advanced Internet Research Laboratory 
Contact: Cees de Laat, delaat @ science.uva.nl 

Token-Based Networking* 
Nortel Networks 
University of Amsterdam, Advanced Internet Research Group (The Netherlands) 
Contact: Cees de Laat, delaat @ science.uva.nl 

* Application presentations taking place in the Dutch Consortium booth. 

University of Southern California (USC) (booth 652) 
Grid Visualization Toolkit with SCEC Data USC Information Sciences Institute 
USC Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) 
Contact: Marcus Thiebaux, thiebaux @ isi.edu 

STORCLOUD 
Interactive Remote Visualization of Large High-Resolution Time-Varying Geophysical and Biological Datasets: LambdaRAM and LambdaStream 
University of Illinois at Chicago, Electronic Visualization Laboratory 
Contact: Venkatram Vishwanath, venkat @ evl.uic.edu 

TECHNICAL PAPERS 
Supporting Configurable Congestion Control in Data Transport Service 
Yunhong Gu, Robert Grossman 
University of Illinois at Chicago, National Center for Data Mining 
Contact: Yunhong Gu, Robert Grossman, grossman @ uic.edu 

MASTERWORKS 
The Strategic Future of Data and the Mining of Massive Data Sets - Part 1 
Robert Grossman 
University of Illinois at Chicago, National Center for Data Mining 
Contact: Robert Grossman, grossman @ uic.edu 

TUTORIALS 
A Tutorial Introduction to High Performance Analytics 
Robert Grossman, Vipin Kumar and Steve Eick 
University of Illinois at Chicago, National Center for Data Mining 
University of Minnesota 
Contact: Robert Grossman, grossman @ uic.edu 

GRID 2005: 6th IEEE / ACM International Workshop on Grid Computing 
Web Services and Grid Security Vulnerabilities and Threats Analysis and Model (poster) 
Yuri Demchenko, Leon Gommans, Cees de Laat, Bas van Oudenaarde 
University of Amsterdam, Advanced Internet Research Group (The Netherlands) 
Cees de Laat, delaat @ science.uva.nl 

The OptIPuter 

A Powerful Distributed Cyberinfrastructure to Support Data-Intensive Scientific Research and Collaboration 
<a href="http://www.optiputer.net">www.optiputer.net</a> 

Academic Partners 
Calit2 (California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology): University of California, San Diego and University of California, Irvine Northwestern University 
San Diego State University 
Texas A&amp;M University 
University of Southern California&rsquo;s Information Sciences Institute 
University of Illinois at Chicago 
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, National Center for Supercomputing Applications 

Affiliate Partners 
NASA 
US Geological Survey, National Center for Earth Resources Observation and Science 
CANARIE 
SARA Computing and Networking Services (The Netherlands) 
University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands) 
KISTI (Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information) (Korea) 
AIST (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology), (Japan) 

Industrial Partners 
Big Bandwidth 
Calient Networks, Inc. 
Chiaro Networks, Inc. 
Glimmerglass Networks, Inc. 
IBM 
Lucent Technologies 
Sun Microsystems
Telcordia Technologies 

Collaborators 
CENIC (Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California) 
Centro de Investigaci&oacute;n Cientifica y de Educaci&oacute;n Superior de Ensenada (CICESE) 
National LambdaRail 
San Diego Telecom Council

TeraVision Streams Displayed on Tiled Display

OptIPuter Exhibited at SC05

EVL congratulates PhD student, Tom Peterka on being awarded the University&rsquo;s Fellowship for the academic year 2006-7. Tom was chosen for this honor and is considered most outstanding in his program of study which focuses upon autostereoscopic display system research and development.

EVL PhD Student Tom Peterka Awarded the University Fellowship for 2006-7

DRAWING CURRENT is the first large group MFA thesis exhibitions featurning a broad range of electronic visualization mediated artwork by six graduating EVL MFAs! 

OPENING RECEPTION: May 12, 5-9PM 
EXHIBIT: May 13-15, noon-6pm 

FEATURED ARTISTS / WORK: 

skin, by Helen-Nicole Kostis 
<a href="http://www.evl.uic.edu/eleni/thesis">www.evl.uic.edu/eleni/thesis</a> 
An interactive, skin-derived media installation that explores the intersection of the body as landscape / mindscape and the body&rsquo;s own traces of touch. 

Omniuum, by Hyeyun Park 
<a href="http://www.evl.uic.edu/milg/omniuum">www.evl.uic.edu/milg/omniuum</a> 
Human being is, regardless of time and space over the history, destined to be a creature that exists in the circumstances where interactions with one another and the rest of the world are essential. In Omniuum, the relationship among human beings lived based on mutuality will be visualized by blurring the boundaries of time and space to represent the nature of a space-time continuum of the universe. 

[Un] Limited Edition - Fragments on Consumerism, by Poliana Tassini 
[Un] Limited Edition - Fragments on Consumerism, is a CG animation whose unconventional narrative unfolds around key concepts connected to the phenomenon of consumerism. Comprised of 9 animated fragments, the piece is designed to portray the many facets of consumerism, dealing with the multidimensionality of consuming experience, within which consumers feel constrained and controlled, yet liberated and sovereign. Developed in Alias Maya software, the piece attempts to portray the interminable and controversial discussion about consumption, consumerism and what it means to be human within the madness, irrationality and hysteria of a materialist consumer society. 

[pan], by Sangyoon Lee 
[pan] is a Korean word invoking several different meanings, such as: plate, disk, place, stage. By interacting with three forms of interface, the visual installation computers render tabletops as newly generative organic aesthetics. 

Cue, by Tina Shah 
<a href="http://www.evl.uic.edu/tinas/cue">www.evl.uic.edu/tinas/cue</a> 
In all of us we have stored away memories that can be conjured up with the slightest trigger. Cue is an abstraction on the visual processing experienced during moments of recollection. By exploring relationships between the artist&rsquo;s past episodes and images captured in the exhibition space, a unique perspective is created on the connections we share with our own memories.

DRAWING CURRENT - MFA Thesis Exhibition

UIC College of Engineering News 

Professor Tom Moher has been named a UIC Great Cities Scholar for the academic year 2006-2007. Moher, the first faculty member from the College of Engineering to receive the award since its inception in 1999, received the award for his proposal, &ldquo;Technology Support for Embodied Learning in Urban Science Classrooms,&rdquo; which seeks to investigate the potential of ubiquitous, ambient media in supporting science inquiry in elementary and middle schools. 

The Great Cities Institute (GCI) serves as the University of Illinois at Chicago&rsquo;s focal point for new initiatives in interdisciplinary, applied urban research, summarized in UIC&rsquo;s metropolitan commitment known as the Great Cities Commitment. GCI attempts to build a unique, responsive and strongly supported center of urban research based on UIC&rsquo;s commitment to first class research in and for the great cities of the world - with a particular emphasis on Chicago. 

Institute Scholars pursue their research and participate in the development of the Institute, which is devoted to research surrounding issues of importance to cities. They are released from formal teaching and administrative obligations during their apointment at the Institute.

Professor Tom Moher named UIC Great Cities Scholar for 2006 - 2007

Andrew Johnson gave a tutorial &ldquo;Towards the Holodeck: Advanced Visualization and Collaboration Environments&rdquo; at UIC as part of the Newberry Library&rsquo;s Teachers and Scholars Program. 

Chicago Teachers as Scholars (TAS) is a series of content-based professional development seminars for Chicago Public School teachers. This program is offered by the Newberry Library in partnership with the Chicago Public Schools Teachers Academy for Professional Development and the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Chicago. 

The primary goal of TAS seminars is to improve the knowledge base of CPS teachers in the subjects they teach. These seminars reconnect teachers with the world of scholarship and keep them aware of recent scholarly developments in their fields. In addition, the seminars introduce teachers to the Newberry Library, a cultural institution that can sustain learning for them and their students. Seminars allow teachers to study and discuss specific topics in the humanities and sciences with their colleagues and an established scholar/teacher. Each two-day seminar is designed to allow teachers time to use one of the world&rsquo;s premier research facilities to enhance their classroom teaching. Past participants of the program have expressed tremendous enthusiasm for the intellectual rigor of the seminars and the stimulating discussions with seminar leaders and their fellow teachers. 

Seminars begin at 9:00 a.m. and end at 3:00 p.m. each day. Teachers are required to attend both days of the seminars for which they are enrolled. Seminars are conducted during the work week, with substitute coverage provided by the CPS Teachers Academy for Professional Development. 

This collaboration between the Newberry Library, UIC, and Chicago Public Schools enhances participants&rsquo; classroom instruction by nourishing their interest in their disciplines and their love of learning. These benefits do not end when a seminar is over. After completing their seminars, TAS participants are warmly welcomed into the Newberry&rsquo;s community of learners. In addition, they receive special notices of ongoing opportunities to attend stimulating public programs and workshops.

The Newberry Library

EVL Participates in Newberry Library&rsquo;s Teachers and Scholars Program

Andrew Johnson gave a presentation and series of demonstrations on EVL&rsquo;s high resolution and 3D display technology to the Chicago Map Society during their visit to EVL. 

Founded in 1976, the Chicago Map Society is the oldest map society in North America. Meetings are held during the academic year at the Newberry Library. Meetings begin with an informal social half-hour, followed by a 45-minute presentation and a brief discussion. The society occasionally arranges excursions to map libraries and often dedicates one meeting a year as a time for members to share their own maps with the group.

Chicago Map Society Visits EVL

A video documenting the Round Earth Project was selected to be part of the Electronic Theater at SIGGRAPH 99, and was shown at Mann&rsquo;s Chinese Theater in LA.

A still from &lsquo;Round Earth&rsquo;

Round Earth Video Shown During SIGGRAPH 99 Evening Show

Dr. Frederico Pereira Laier of the Universidade Federal do Rio De Janeiro <a href="http://www.ufrj.br">(UFRJ)</a> invited Jason Leigh and Paul Morin to give presentations on EVL&rsquo;s advanced visualization, collaboration and networking research to his students, the Computer Graphics Technology Group at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro <a href="http://www.tecgraf.puc-rio.br/">(TecGraf - PUC-Rio)</a>, and members of the Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos <a href="http://www.finep.gov.br">(FINEP)</a> - which is Brazil&rsquo;s equivalent of the U.S. National Science Foundation. 

Brazil&rsquo;s first GeoWall system was also installed, in the Geology Department at the Universidade Federal do Rio De Janeiro.

Geology and Geography Professors Seeing Brazil&rsquo;s First GeoWall

Presentations on Advanced Visualization and Collaboration at universities in Rio De Janeiro

Rutopia 2, virtual walk-through video animation was presented at the <a href="http://www.graphicslink.co.uk/IV06/">7th International Symposium of Computer Animation and Visual Effects, IV06-CAVE</a>. 

This symposium was designed to provide a forum to the researchers, educators, and practitioners in this field to share their opinions. 

The symposium aimed to identify presentations on Key research issues, review the current state-of-the-art developments, and outline future directions. 

Embedded with the current research being undertaken in industry and academia, this symposium provided coverage of the salient aspects and sub-areas of Computer Animation within the field of visualisation, computer generated graphics, and beyond. 

<a href="http://www.evl.uic.edu/animagina/rutopia/rutopia2">Rutopia 2</a> explores the aesthetics of virtual art in its relationship with the art of painting and Russian folk arts, such as Palekh, Khokhloma, Dymkovo toys, Fedoskino and Lubok. 

The aesthetics of Rutopia 2 is based upon their principles of composition, bright colors, simplified shapes, and material culture. It serves as a framing device to unite the concepts of the network tree, public sculpture, and futuristic design while maintaining aesthetics principles of the previous centuries. 

In addition, the development of tile display devices/systems and their potential, such as high-resolution, segmentation, modularity, and parallel computing, contributed in the conceptualization of Rutopia 2.

Rutopia 2 - Virtual Walk-Through

Rutopia 2 - Virtual Walk-Through Presented at the IV06, London

The virtual reality art project <a href="http://www.evl.uic.edu/animagina/rutopia/rutopia2/">Rutopia 2</a> was presented at the <a href="http://resumbrae.com/if06/">Virtual Reality SubFest</a> organized by Dave Pape and presented by Virtual Reality MicroTheatre in Buffalo, NY in conjunction with the <a href="http://infringebuffalo.org/wiki/">2006 Buffalo Infringement Festival</a>. 

This festival within a festival featured interactive, virtual reality performance, multi-media video and interactive art works in digital virtual worlds. The 3D stereo graphics were projected on a large screen and two head-mounted displays. Participants interacted with virtual worlds, live actors, and artificial intelligence characters.

Rutopia 2 Presented at the Virtual Reality SubFest, Buffalo, NY

EVL researchers, PhD candidates Robert Kooima and Tom Peterka complete advancements in EVL&rsquo;s Varrier&trade; Autostereo display system research. The latest Varrier systems have twice the resolution and increased rendering performance as a result of the development of a new algorithm, Varrier Combiner, that exploits programmable graphics processing for significantly increased sub-pixel Varrier line screen rendering performance; sub-pixel-scale rendering is no longer more expensive than pixel-scale rendering. This has afforded system developers to reduce the resolution of the parallax barrier down from pixel scale to sub-pixel scale, resulting in tremendous resolution and performance gains. 

Calit2 at the University of California at San Diego has recently deployed that world&rsquo;s largest Varrier system at 65-panels that takes advantage of this research (pictured right: EVL Directors, Tom DeFanti, Dan Sandin, and Post-doctoral Research Associate, Javier Girado assist Calit2 staff on the installation of the 65-panel Varrier at Calit2. R. Kooima and T. Peterka not pictured.)

In late 2006 researchers deployed a 65-panel Cylindrical Varrier Autostereo VR Display system at Calit2.

EVL&rsquo;s Varrier Technology Advances

September, 2006, e-Art&hellip; Art&hellip; Net&hellip; Technology&hellip; Society&hellip; Democracy? 

&hellip;book by Franz Fischnaller will be published by Editori Riuniti in paperback in Italian and accompanying cd-room in English. 

e-Art will be in the main Italian bookstores from 5 November 2006. Presentations will be organized in several cities of Italy including Rome, Turin, Milan, Bologna, Genoa, Naples, Salerno, Siena, Venice, etc. 

The first presentation of e-Art will take place at 4:30 PM, November 15, 2006 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome [MACRO]. 

e-Art&hellip; approaches on several topics from various viewpoints, such as: remote arts, electronic art, transgenic art, mobile media, networking, superbroad band, telecommunications, tele-presence, biogenetics, robotics, virtual reality, electronic, nanotechnology, augmented reality, digital media, music, synesthesia, neuroscience, multisensory processes, research, digital technology, communication, human-networking interfaces, cultural heritage, interactivity, democracy, ecology, human rights, philosophy, politics, knowledge, information, sociology and economy. 

e-Art also investigates the primacy of intangibility in many new art forms, in new artistic languages and the different paths toward creativity, interactivity, edemocracy, ecology, information, and post-realistic experiences. In this book Art, creativity and the net assume cohesive roles as vital elements and interdisciplinary realities inherent to Art and our society, emphasizing ART as a proactive tool and a behavioral new media rather than ART as a scholastic-winner tech subject. e-Art brings together forty eclectic authors of diverse provenance and specialties: theoreticians, writers, artists, students, journalists, producers, poets, gurus and visionaries who operate in the scientific, electronic, artistic, cultural, ecological, industrial, social and political ambit like: Mauro Annunziato [Italy] | Kapil Arora [India] | Annette Barbier [USA] | Massimo Bertoncini [Italy] | Mary Ann Breeze [Australia] | Maxine Brown [USA] | Drew Browning [USA] | Pier Luigi Capucci [Italy] |, Tomas DeFanti [USA] | Sara Diamond [Canada] Steve Dietz [USA] | Manuel Gllardo [Venezuela] | Petra Gemeinboeck [Austria] | Eduardo Kac [Brazil] | Jaron Lanier [USA] | Jason Leigh [USA] | Golan Levin [USA] | Brenda Lopez [Mexico] | Bernhard Losch [Italy] | Ya Lu Lin [China] | Roger Malina [USA] | Paul Marino [USA] | Rigoberta Mench&uacute;, premio Nobel per la pace [Guatemala] | Marcello Napoli [Italy] | Francesco Saverio Nucci [Italy] | Blanca Helena Pantin [Venezuela] | Howard Rheingold [USA] | Alfredo Ronchi [Italy] | Alejandro Sacristan [Spain] | Daniel Sandin [USA] | Paul Sermon [UK] | Stelarc [Australia] | Robert Stone [UK] | Nadia Thalman [Switzerland] | Rosa Truijllo [Venezuela] | Yesi Maharaj Singh [Venezuela] | Unesco | Manuel Vi&ntilde;as Limonchi [Spain] | Daniela Voto [Italy] | Stephen Wilson [USA]. 

During the first presentation of e-Art on 15 November 2006 at 4.30 p.m. at Museum of Contemporary Art in Roma [MACRO] will take place a panel open to the participation of the public to share experiences, discussions, opinions in relation to the different fields of interests of the book. With the partecipation of Dr Danilo Eccher, Director of MACRO of Roma, of Dr Ricca, Director of Editori Riuniti, Prof. Franz Fischnaller, author of e-Art and special guests as: Prof. Alberto Abruzzese, Dr. Mauro Annunziato, Dr. Valerio Eletti, Dr. Michele Emmer, Dr Maurizio Forte, Prof. Mario Morcellini, Dr Renato Parascandolo, Prof. Domenico Parisi, Dr. Lorenzo Maria Pupillo, Prof. Lorenzo Taiuti. 

Prof. Alberto Abruzzese. Professor of the Sociology of Mass Communications at the &ldquo;La Sapienza&rdquo; University of Rome. He carries out research activities in the field of mass communications and organizes conventions and seminars Author of numerous essays on communications and the media. He also contributes regularly to a number of newspapers and reviews with articles on expressive strategies and the cultural politics of the cinema, television and information. 

Dr. Mauro Annunziato. Mauro Annunziato founded the media art-science group PLANCTON in &rsquo;94 with Piero Pierucci focusing the research on the creative and aesthetical potentialities of chaos and artificial life, the relation between art and science, mind and society, communication and interaction. 

Dr. Valerio Eletti. Journalist, editor , expert in areas of the e-learning system and multimedia. Professor at the Department of Science of the Communication, at the &ldquo;La Sapienza&rdquo; University of Rome. 

Dr. Michele Emmer. Professor of mathematics at the University of Rome &ldquo;La Sapienza&rdquo;, Dipartimento di Matematica. President of the Italian associations for scientific media, part of the European association &ldquo;Media in Science&rdquo;. Member of the editorial board of Leonardo, of the American Mathematical Society, of the American Ass. for Aesthetics, of the European Math ass., etc. Reviewer for journal of mathematics and journals of art. president of the scientific journal &ldquo;Galileo&rdquo;. 

Dr Maurizio Forte. Senior Scientist at the National Research Council, Institute of Technologies Applied to the Cultural Heritage (Rome) director of the <a href="http://www.itabc.cnr.it/VHLab/">Virtual Heritage Lab</a>, Vice President of the Virtual Heritage Network, professor of Multimedia archiving of archaeological data at the Second University of Naples. 

Prof. Mario Morcellini. Professor of the Sociology of Communication and cocoordinator of the graduate course in the Science of Communication at the &ldquo;La Sapienza&rdquo; University in Rome. He has been a member of the Ministerial Commission for the reform of the graduate course in Sociology and of the Ministerial Commission of the graduate course in Science of Communication. 

Dr Renato Parascandolo. Assistant of the General Director of Rai Radiotelevisione Ialiana. Fields of specialization: mass media communication, education, journalism, human science and digital media applied to cultural heritage. 

Prof. Domenico Parisi. Director at the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies of the National Research Council in Rome, where he is part of the research group Laboratory of Artificial Life and Robotics. He is the Director of the review &lsquo;Sistemi Intelligenti&rsquo;. 

Dr. Lorenzo Maria Pupillo. Executive Director at Telecom Italia for Strategy, Innovation and Development. Adviser to the Information for Development Program in the Global Information and Communication Technologies Department of the World Bank. 

Prof. Lorenzo Taiuti. Author of video, installations in collaboration with experimental musicians for audiovisual productions. Professor in mass media, visual arts, multimedia and new technology at Department of Architecture Valle Giulia, University La Sapienza, Rome. 

Museo di Arte Contemporanea di Roma [MACRO] 
via Reggio Emilia, 54 - 00198 Roma 
MACRO AL MATTATOIO 
Piazza Orazio Giustiniani 4 - 00153 Roma 
Centralino +39 06 6710 70400 
fax +39 06 855 4090 
<a href="http://www.macro.roma.museum/">www.macro.roma.museum/</a> 

Credits: 
Author: Prof. Franz Fischnaller 
Editor: Editori Riuniti,Rome,Italy 
Project Coordinator: Daniela Voto, F.A.B.R.I.CATORS 
Development of the cd-room: Manuel Vi&ntilde;as Limonchi 
With the contribution of: Engineering - Ingegneria Informatica S.p.A., Rome / Italy 

eArt web: 
<a href="http://www.fabricat.com/eART.htm">www.fabricat.com/eART.htm</a> 
<a href="http://www.fabricat.com/eART_Tcontent.htm">www.fabricat.com/eART_Tcontent.htm</a> 
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e-Art&hellip; Art&hellip; Net&hellip; Technology&hellip; Society&hellip; Democracy&hellip;

F. Fischnaller, Chief Design, Project &amp; Production Manager, F.A.B.R.I.CATORS

EVL graduate Maria Roussou completed requirements for a Doctorate of Philosophy from the University College of London, Department of Computer Science, July 18, 2006. Under the advisement of Dr. Mel Slater, Maria&rsquo;s research interests in interactive education culminated in the thesis entitled, &ldquo;Interactivity and Learning: Examining primary school children&rsquo;s activity within virtual environments&rdquo;. This research is a direct extension of Maria&rsquo;s earlier work with interactive virtual reality learning environments explored while a MFA and MS graduate student at EVL / UIC. 

Abstract 

This research investigates user interaction in virtual reality learning environments, focusing on the role and the effect of interactivity on learning and change in conceptual understanding. The goal had been to examine if children learn better by interactive in an immersive virtual environment (VE), i.e. exploring, reacting to, and acting upon events. The two essential properties of a virtual reality (VR) experience, especially in entertainment and informal learning applications, are immersion and interactivity - each of which is advertised widely to attract and motivate participants. In particular, it is commonly considered that a learning environment is more effective if it is interactive. However, little systematic research has been available to substantiate this assumption and no clear evidence has existed that interactive VE applications can bring &ldquo;added value&rdquo; to learning, especially in children. 

In this research, empirical studies were carried out with 60 primary school students (ages 8 - 12), in a number of different studies. An exploratory study was carried out to test the methodology and prepare for the main study. The main study, a large scale experiment, was conducted with a VE designed to simulate a &lsquo;virtual playground&rsquo;, which focused on a presentation of problems in mathematical fractions. Three conditions - an interactive VR, a passive (or guided) VR, and a non-VR condition - each with different levels of activity and interactivity, were designed to evaluate how children accomplish the various conceptual tasks. Pre-tests, post-tests, interviews, video and computer activity logs were collected for each participant, and analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The results indicate that activity based on the cues or feedback provided by the VE led participants to complete the tasks successfully (i.e. problem solving) compared to the non-VE condition. However, it was the passive rather than the interactive condition that provided evidence of sustained conceptual change.

Thesis Acknowledgement

Student Interacting with Virtual Playground Application

Dr. Maria Roussou

UNFOLDING SPACE 

The tridimensional shadow of a four dimensional textured grid unfolds in a virtual reality environment. Julieta Aguilera places the viewer within the abstract version of a walk into a forest, at the precise moment that light causes foliage and shadows to merge into a unified pattern. 

<a href="http://www.liveboxgallery.com">www.liveboxgallery.com</a> 

Kasia Kay Art Projects 
(lower level) 
1044 W Fulton Market 
Chicago, IL 60607 

with generous support from the Electronic Visualization Laboratory University of Illinois at Chicago (EVL / UIC) 

Kasia Kay Art Projects 312.492.8828 
LiveBox Gallery 312.236.5692 

lecture: October 21st, 4:15pm 
opening night: October 20th 6-9pm 
through November 25, 2006

UNFOLDING SPACE Invitation

Still from UNFOLDING SPACE

LiveBox Gallery presents UNFOLDING SPACE by Julieta Aguilera in collaboration with Andy Johnson

Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and EVL co-director Tom DeFanti is being honored with an Outstanding Research Achievement award by UIC&rsquo;s College of Engineering during its 2006 Outstanding Alumni, Faculty, and Staff Awards ceremony. The awards ceremony will be held November 2nd at the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame in Chicago. Dr. DeFanti is unable to attend due to travel conflicts.

DeFanti Recognized with Outstanding Research Achievement Award

StarFlight, an interactive virtual reality application that explores the three-dimensional nature of constellations, opens in Mexico City&rsquo;s Laboratorio Arte Alameda on November 28 and runs through February 11, 2007. The exhibit was developed by the University of Chicago&rsquo;s Center for the Presentation of Science in collaboration with the Electronic Visualization Laboratory, with funding provided by the National Science Foundation. 

StarFlight provides an interactive exploration of the Orion, Ursa Major and Scorpius constellations from Earth and from space using star data cataloged by the European Space Agency&rsquo;s Hipparcos Satellite. It is being exhibited in Mexico City as part of a cooperative educational outreach agreement between the University of Chicago and the Laboratorio Arte Alameda.

StarFlight GUI (seeing Ursa Major)

StarFlight Astronomy Visualization Exhibit Opens in Mexico City&rsquo;s Laboratorio Arte Alameda

EVLers participate at the IS&amp;T / SPIE 19th Annual Symposium: Electronic Imaging / Science and Technology with the following paper presentations: 
<ul>
<li>Monday, January 29, 2007 
SESSION 1 Stereoscopic Display Applications 
&ldquo;Evolution of the Varrier&trade; autostereoscopic VR display: 2001-2007&rdquo;, T. Peterka, R. L. Kooima, J. I. Girado, J. Ge, D. J. Sandin, T. A. DeFanti </li>
<li>Wednesday, January 31, 2007 
SESSION 14 Virtual Environments: The Experience 
&ldquo;Passing excellence&rdquo;, D. Tsoupikova 

&ldquo;CytoViz: an artistic mapping of network measurements as living organisms in a VR application&rdquo;, B. A. Lopez Silva, L. Renambot 

&ldquo;Skin: an interactive hyperstereoscopic electro installatio&rdquo;, H. N. Kostis, R. L. Kooima, J. Kannenberg</li>
</ul>

Varrier Presentation PPTs

Sandin Showing Varrier Display Screen

IS&amp;T / SPIE International Symposium 2007

EVL Visiting Research Assistant Professor, Luc Renambot presented EVL&rsquo;s advanced visualiztion and networking research to colleagues and students of the PRIUS (Pacific Rim International University) Program, Osaka Japan. Invited by Osaka University and the PRIUS Program, Dr. Renambot&rsquo;s talk, &ldquo;Advanced Visualization and Collaboration Research over High-Speed Networks&rdquo; discussed EVL&rsquo;s vision for the creation of persistent internationally distributed collaboration facilities, including high-performance computing, advanced visualization, and one-of-kind instruments, to foster knowledge and discoveries for scientific advancement, and to engage students as they prepare for the global workforce. The foundations of these collaborative environments are among grid computing, optical networks (lambda grid), and high-resolution visualization. 

The PRIUS project, promoted by Osaka University, aims to foster human resources capable of taking leadership with international perspective and reinforce the Japanese international competitive power.

Advanced Visualization Lecture Slides

Dr. Luc Renambot

Advanced Visualization and Collaboration Research over High-Speed Networks

EVLers participate at the IEEE Virtual Reality 2007 Conference (<a href="http://conferences.computer.org/vr/2007/index.html">IEEE VR&rsquo;07</a>) with the following presentations: 
<ul>
<li>Sunday, March 11, 2007 
WORKSHOP: Trends and Issues in Tracking for Virtual Environments 
&ldquo;Real Time Neural Network-based Face Tracker for VR Displays&rdquo;, J. I. Girado, T. Peterka, R. L. Kooima, J. Ge, D. J. Sandin, A. Johnson, J. Leigh, T. A. DeFanti </li>
<li>Tuesday, March 13, 2007 
PAPERS 3: Scene Complexity Management 
&ldquo;The Effects of Scene Complexity, Stereovision, and Motion Parallax on Size Constancy in a Virtual Environment&rdquo;, X. Luo, R. Kenyon, D. Kamper, D. Sandin, T. DeFanti </li>
<li>Wednesday, March 14, 2007 
PAPERS 7: Display 
&ldquo;A GPU Sub-pixel Algorithm for Autostereoscopic Virtual Reality&rdquo;, R.L. Kooima, T. Peterka, J. I. Girado, J. Ge, D. J. Sandin, T. A. DeFanti 

&ldquo;Dynallax: Solid State Dynamic Parallax Barrier Autostereoscopic VR Display&rdquo;, T. Peterka, R. L. Kooima, J. I. Girado, J. Ge, D. J. Sandin, A. Johnson, J. Leigh, J. Schulze, T. A. DeFanti</li>
</ul> 

The following videos documenting EVL research will also be presented at the event: 
<ul>
<li>&ldquo;Rutopia 2&rdquo;, D. Tsoupikova</li>
<li>&ldquo;skin: An Interactive Hyperstereoscopic High-Definition Installation&rdquo;, H. Kostis, J. Kannenberg, R. Kooima</li>
</ul>

Autostereo Teleconferencing via Personal Varrier System Using Camera-based Tracking

IEEE Virtual Reality 2007

The inventors of the CAVE - Thomas DeFanti, Daniel Sandin, and Carolina Cruz-Neira have been named by the IEEE VGTC VR Awards Committee as the 2007 IEEE Virtual Reality Technical Achievement Award winners for their development of the CAVE technology. The award will be presented during the IEEE Virtual Reality Conference (<a href="http://conferences.computer.org/vr/2007/">VR2007</a>), March 10-14 in Charlotte, North Carolina. 

Currently, Thomas DeFanti and Daniel Sandin are Directors of the EVL lab, while Carolina Cruz-Neira is Executive Director, Chief Scientist at the Louisiana Immersive Technologies Enterprise (<a href="http://www.lite3d.com">LITE</a>).

Thomas DeFanti, Daniel Sandin, and Carolina Cruz-Neira

CAVE Inventors Receive IEEE Virtual Reality Technical Achievement Award

EVL computer science doctoral candidate Tom Peterka received the Best Paper Award at the IEEE Virtual Reality Conference 2007 (<a href="http://conferences.computer.org/vr/2007/">IEEE VR2007</a>), for &ldquo;Dynallax: Solid State Dynamic Parallax Barrier Autostereoscopic VR Display&rdquo;. 

Paper co-authors include EVL computer science doctoral candidate Robert L. Kooima, EVL graduate and UCSD post-doctoral researcher Javier Girado, EVL computer science doctoral candidate Jinghua Ge, EVL co-director Daniel Sandin, computer science associate professor Andrew Johnson, computer science associate professor and EVL co-director Jason Leigh, UCSD project scientist Jurgen Schulze, and computer science distinguished professor emeritus Thomas A. DeFanti. 

Dynallax 

The Dynallax uses a solid-state, dynamic parallax barrier to provide a no-glasses-needed 3D display. The Dynallax technology is based on, and expands upon, the EVL-developed Varrier, a static barrier display system. The Dynallax has been built in single-monitor version known as the Personal Varrier and a 65-panel Cylindrical Varrier version. 

The original Varrier technology limited the viewer&rsquo;s range of movement to a 2-by-2-foot area in order to experience the full 3D effect without wearing glasses. By dynamically controlling the parallax barrier in real time, the Dynallax produces more than two eye channels, substantially increasing the user&rsquo;s range of movement, allowing the user to experience the 3D environment in a large area without the use of 3D glasses.

Dynallax: Solid State Dynamic Parallax Barrier Autostereoscopic VR Display

Tom Peterka Wins Best Paper at IEEE VR2007

<a href="http://www.calit2.net/newsroom/release.php?id=1071">Please click on this link for the full text of this article</a> 

San Diego, CA and Chicago, IL, March 16, 2007 - Researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) came away from the IEEE Virtual Reality 2007 conference this week with two major honors: the Best Paper Award; and IEEE&rsquo;s Virtual Reality Technical Achievement Award. 

Nine co-authors shared in the Best Paper prize for their work on a brand-new display technology, called Dynallax, which could one day allow more than one person to roam through the same 3D virtual reality (VR) environment without wearing glasses. 

Two of the best-paper authors - Calit2 Director of Visualization Tom DeFanti, and UIC&rsquo;s Daniel Sandin, who now spends one week a month at Calit2 in San Diego - shared in the VR Technical Achievement Award for their invention of the CAVE&reg; immersive display environment fifteen years ago at UIC&rsquo;s Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL). 

The IEEE honor recognizes researchers for a &ldquo;seminal technical achievement in virtual and augmented reality,&rdquo; and the award was bestowed this week at VR2007 in Charlotte, North Carolina. Sandin accepted the award on behalf of himself and DeFanti, with Carolina Cruz-Neira, their EVL graduate student in the 1990s, who is now executive director and chief scientist at the Louisiana Immersive Technologies Enterprise. DeFanti and Sandin co-founded and led EVL, and remain directors there.

Dynallax: Dynamic Parallax Barrier Autostereoscopic Display

A user interacts with Dynallax, wearing a tracking sensor on a headband. Eventually, Dynallax tracking will be camera-based and tetherless.

EVL and Calit2 Researchers Share in Two IEEE Virtual Reality Awards

Title of the Talk: &ldquo;Emerging from the CAVE: Advanced Visualization and Collaboration Research at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory&rdquo; 

EVL invented the CAVE in 1992. Since then EVL has pursued a wide range of research topics. The presentation will provide an overview of EVL&rsquo;s recent research in visualization, high speed networking, and computer supported cooperative work that has been conducted as part of the OptIPuter project. 

The OptIPuter, so named for its use of Optical networking, Internet Protocol, computer storage, processing and visualization technologies, is an envisioned infrastructure that will tightly couple computational resources over parallel optical networks using the IP communication mechanism. The OptIPuter exploits a new world in which the central architectural element is optical networking, not computers - creating &ldquo;supernetworks&rdquo;. This paradigm shift requires large-scale applications-driven, system experiments and a broad multidisciplinary team to understand and develop innovative solutions for a &ldquo;LambdaGrid&rdquo; world. 

The goal of this new architecture is to enable scientists who are generating terabytes and petabytes of data to interactively visualize, analyze, and correlate their data from multiple storage sites connected to optical networks.

The Allosphere at UCSB

Jason Leigh presents EVL Research to UC Santa Barbara&rsquo;s Interative Digital Multimedia IGERT Members

Dr. Yasuhiro Yoshida from Sharp Japan and Dr. Ibrahim Sezan from Sharp Labs US visited EVL to get an overview of the lab&rsquo;s advanced visualization display technologies, applications, and to discuss technological developments at Sharp that may be applicable to EVL&rsquo;s research. 

Dr. Yoshida and Dr. Sezan were shown demos of the LambdaVision, LambdaTable, Varrier, Personal Varrier, Dynallax, IDesk4, GeoWall, and PARIS systems.

EVL Demo Presentation for Sharp Labs

Toll signs take new direction: Experiment aims to boost safety 
by Jon Hilkevitch, Chicago Tribune 
Getting Around column - <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/gettingaround">www.chicagotribune.com/gettingaround</a> 
Published April 23, 2007 

In a laboratory where some of the eye-popping special effects for the first &ldquo;Star Wars&rdquo; film were created, college professor Jason Leigh sits behind the steering wheel of a Mercedes-Benz simulator that is tooling - and tolling - along the Illinois tollway. 

This computer-animated trip on the toll road is not part of some new movie production. Rather, it&rsquo;s taking place at the University of Illinois at Chicago in an experiment using volunteer drivers of various ages, including truckers, to devise new tollway signs to help direct drivers to pay their tolls. 

The goal of the project, commissioned by a contractor working for the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority, is to come up with signs that are easier to understand and to improve safety by giving drivers more time to get into the correct lane to pay their tolls. 

Some drivers, for example, are baffled by the intent of an existing tollway symbol, dubbed the &ldquo;cactus arrow,&rdquo; which is designed to direct I-PASS users to stay on the mainline highway for electronic toll collection and cash-paying customers to get over into the right lanes to enter the toll plaza, officials say. 

&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve heard concerns from drivers about confusion over the existing signs,&rdquo; toll authority spokeswoman Joelle McGinnis said. &ldquo;Some motorists, mostly occasional tollway drivers or people from out of state, are failing to understand the difference between open-road tolling and the need to divert to the right to pay cash tolls.&rdquo; 

As Leigh drives down the middle lane, his attention is focused on two 30-inch color screens designed to mimic what would be seen outside the car&rsquo;s windshield. Large overhead signs featuring experimental symbols and text instructing drivers to prepare for the open-road tolling and cash lanes 1 mile ahead come into view as Leigh drives at the pre-set speed of 60 m.p.h., slightly faster than the speed limit but considerably slower than is the custom for many Chicago-area motorists. 

&ldquo;I know that when I drive on [Interstate Highway 294, or the Tri-State Tollway], most people are going about 80 [m.p.h.],&rdquo; said Leigh, director of the university&rsquo;s Electronic Visualization Laboratory.

IPass Signs

EVL in Chicago Tribune: Toll signs take new direction

EVL Director, Jason Leigh presents EVL&rsquo;s latest research in advanced visualization techniques and technologies to the Center for Computation &amp; Technology at Louisiana State University, May 24, 2007, 2:00 - 3:00pm - Life Sciences Building Annex A101 Auditorium. 

Abstract 
In 1992 EVL invented the CAVE, a room-sized immersive virtual reality environment. Since then EVL has pursued a wide range of research topics. 

The presentation will provide an overview of EVL&rsquo;s recent research in visualization, high speed networking, and computer supported cooperative work that has been conducted as part of the OptIPuter project. 

The OptIPuter, so named for its use of Optical networking, Internet Protocol, computer storage, processing and visualization technologies, is an envisioned infrastructure that will tightly couple computational resources over parallel optical networks using the IP communication mechanism. 

The OptIPuter exploits a new world in which the central architectural element is optical networking, not computers - creating &ldquo;supernetworks&rdquo;. 

This paradigm shift requires large-scale applications-driven, system experiments and a broad multidisciplinary team to understand and develop innovative solutions for a &ldquo;LambdaGrid&rdquo; world. The goal of this new architecture is to enable scientists who are generating terabytes and petabytes of data to interactively visualize, analyze, and correlate their data from multiple storage sites connected to optical networks.

Emerging From The CAVE: Advanced Visualization And Collaboration Research At The Electronic Visualization Laboratory

Telepresence and virtual reality technologies invented in university laboratories over a decade ago, are now being commercialized and adopted by corporations and other entities to help maintain client relationships and support collaborative experiences. It&rsquo;s face time without the expense of physical travel. Soon to follow will be scaled- down, eventually mobile, wireless-networked telepresence products for regular consumers, who have already demonstrated, primarily through their formidable purchasing power, a seemingly no-limits desire to communicate with one another, anywhere and anytime. Society&rsquo;s acceptance and eager adoption of technologies such as the Internet, video gaming, cell phones and digital media players is translating to the rapid commoditization of what was once expensive and specialized equipment housed only in research laboratories. 

One of the pioneering laboratories in telepresence and VR technologies, the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago, continues to advance display technology, visualization, computer-supported cooperative work, and ultra high-speed networking. Dr. Leigh, director of EVL and associate professor of computer science, will describe a future model for technology-mediated collaboration, as well as some of EVL&rsquo;s newly emerging technologies that will combine ubiquitous communication, telepresence and tele-immersion at Telepresence World, June 4-6 at the University of San Diego, California.

Universal Communication: Unifying Ubiquitous Communication, Telepresence and Tele-immersion

The Virtual Reality in Medicine Lab (VRMedLab) is very pleased to announce that the Virtual Reality application, &ldquo;The Virtual Eye / Virtual House&rdquo; has been awarded the Dr. Frank Netter Award for Special Contributions to Medical Education. 

The project was led by Mary Rasmussem of the VRMedLab, consisting of a multi-disciplinary, collaborative team between the VRMedLab, Department of Biomedical and Health Information Sciences, College of Applied Health Sciences, Department of Pharmacy Practice, College of Pharmacy, Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), Department of Computer Science, College of Engineering, Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, College of Medicine, and Allergan Inc. 

Congratulations to the amazing collaborative team including: Richard Fiscella, Zhuming Ai, Bei Jin, Cole Krumbholz, Scott Dixon, Kaitlyn Hwang, Elina Mer, Andrea Stevenson, Angela Brady, Robert Kooima, Ray Evenhouse, Sam Shlomo Spaeth and a special thanks to Robert Parshall. 

Information about the Netter Award is available at: 
<a href="http://www.vesaliustrust.org/2007-netter-award/">www.vesaliustrust.org/2007-netter-award/</a> 

The award will be presented at the annual <a href="http://www.ami.org/2007/">AMI meeting</a> in July.

The Virtual Eye

The Virtual Eye / Virtual House Project Wins the Netter Award

By Jon Van 
Tribune staff reporter 
Published May 14, 2007 

Hiring someone based solely on a phone interview or a videoconference meeting is something Hugh Morris said he has never done and never would. 

Yet, Morris, executive director of a London-based business processing service firm, said that he has hired people he has never met in person but has interviewed using high-end video technology called telepresence. 

&ldquo;They really do appear to be across the table, looking life-sized,&rdquo; said Morris. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s as good as meeting in person.&rdquo; 

By using large flat-screen displays, cameras placed behind the displays and high-quality lighting and sound, several firms, including high-tech stalwarts Cisco Systems Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co., are betting they can create video-based meetings in which it is possible to interact with people, no matter how far away, as if they were in the same room. 

It&rsquo;s an old quest. Since AT&amp;T rolled out its first PicturePhone four decades ago, videoconferencing has fascinated engineers and underwhelmed customers. This time, the engineers believe they have it right, producing full-size, high-definition images of people who look you in the eye as they speak and whose facial expressions and body language can easily be read. 

Developed at universities such as the University of Illinois at Chicago a decade ago, telepresence is starting to reach its commercial potential. The industry has about 650 high-tech meeting rooms in place worldwide, although that number likely will rise to more than 10,000 within a few years, said Howard Lichtman, who operates the Human Productivity Lab in Ashburn, Va., a telepresence consultancy.

EVL Personal Varrier System for Hi-Def Video Conferencing

Videoconferencing goes high-definition Long-distance meetings are being held using full-size images of people whose expressions and body language can be read

2007-May-29 
Baton Rouge - Sight is a person&rsquo;s primary sense, and one-third of a person&rsquo;s brainpower is spent processing visual images. Therefore, visualization is becoming a primary means for scientists and researchers to explore new territory and show new concepts to the general public. 

Jason Leigh, director of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois (Chicago), discussed advanced visualization research and collaboration in a Distinguished Lecture Series for the LSU Center for Computation &amp; Technology, or CCT. 

Leigh explained the guiding principle of his lab is that the best visualization advances occur by pairing researchers from science, art and industry, then seeing how computer science techniques apply to these areas. 

&ldquo;In order to do effective visualization, we need to work with people from other disciplines,&rdquo; Leigh explained. Previously, visualization was studied mainly by computer scientists, but now is done in a collaborative effort with artists and others who can use visualization to process complex problems. 

Leigh showed examples of the work his lab has done throughout the past 34 years. In the 1970s, the Electronic Visualization Laboratory created the computer graphics that were used in the first &ldquo;Star Wars&rdquo; films, an early visualization achievement.

LambdaTable Developed at EVL/UIC

EVL Director Discusses Advanced Techniques In LSU Center For Computation &amp; Technology Distinguished Lecture

Chicago Tribune 
INSIDE TECHNOLOGY 

UIC Working on Making Virtual Chats a Reality 
By Jon Van 

June 4, 2007 

In five or six years, you probably will be able to chat face-to-face with your favorite actor, musician or politician whenever you feel like it. 

The technology for such virtual, three-dimensional visits mostly exists or is being developed by video game companies. Now, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago are at work to apply this to virtual conversations. 

Working with colleagues at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, the computer scientists have a three-year, half-million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation to do the job. 

Graphics technology is already good enough to create realistic-looking human avatars in 3-D, said Jason Leigh, director of UIC&rsquo;s Electronic Visualization Laboratory. Speech recognition is better than 90 percent accurate, and imaging-processing speeds by computers are close to real time.

Avatar of Alex Schwarzkopf (NSF)

UIC Working on Making Virtual Chats a Reality

EVL alumna, Helen-Nicole Kostis presented an invited 4 hour minicourse at the SVR 2007 - IX Symposium of Virtual and Augmented Reality 2007, on &ldquo;Producing High-Definition Hyperstereoscopic Video&rdquo;. 

The purpose of the course is to provide some background history to stereo vision, introduce hyperstereo, and provide all the key elements for the production path of Hyperstereoscopic Video process, including goals, technical limitations, and resolutions. Stereoscopic video can function either as a component or as a fully-fledged alternative in virtual and augmented reality applications, ranging from gaming to educational and collaborative environments and it can even introduce a new form of aesthetics in these environments.

Cameras, stereo base and level

Producing High-Definition Hyperstereoscopic Video at SVR2007

Withindows: A Unified Framework for the Development of Desktop and Immersive User Interfaces 

Prior 3D user interface research has been strongly influenced by the physical nature of a potential ultimate computer interface that can recreate all aspects of reality. 

The focus of such research has not fully appreciated the differences between interactions that augment computational ability and those that seek to create a virtual reality. The result has been poor novice usability, low expert functionality, low object selection and manipulation efficiency and symbolic manipulation methods that are generally less efficient than their desktop counterparts. 

The uniqueness of 3D interaction and first person space is frequently used to justify the shortcomings of such interfaces. However, a coming intersection between geo-referenced database information, ubiquitous networked devices and ubiquitous display technology promises to create an augmented reality that will extend traditional computing into the physical space around us. 

The focus of this research is the belief that it is more likely that desktop applications will make a gradual transition into this space than it is that there will be a paradigm shift into using 3D interfaces The Withindows framework uses image-plane selection and through-the-lens techniques to create a single-authoring framework that optimizes the use of both traditional and immersive applications across transitional states such as desktop stereo, large-format displays and projector-based augmented reality. Because it is a generalization of the typical desktop fixed-viewpoint setup, image-plane selection allows head-tracking, stereoscopy and multiple DOF input devices to be added and removed as needed. 

Image-plane selection can overcome ambiguity problems discouraging prior stereoscopic use by using a virtual cursor in the dominant eye and, thus, resolve non-linear control-display relationships inherent in some approaches to desktop stereo. When combined with through-the-lens techniques, image-plane selection allows immersive 2&frac12;D viewpoint management and object manipulation techniques analogous to those on the desktop that avoid scaling problems and restricted viewpoints. 

This approach resolves global search and control-display scaling problems inherent in prior through-the-lens implementations and allows extensions for 6 DOF input devices that do not supersede the default interaction method. 

The problem of fatigue can be significantly reduced by replacing typical immersive interactions out in front of the user with image-plane selection on windows floating below the hand. This thesis describes the Withindows framework, the development of a proof of concept virtual world builder, and a user study to validate some of the underlying assumptions it makes. 

The user study found evidence that a dominant-eye cursor is well tolerated and that image-plane selection and ray-casting produce comparable levels of user fatigue and ease of use. 

The desktop development application was evaluated over a full semester in a classroom environment, and the immersive application was evaluated in three separate projects by expert users. 

Presentation and Defense: 
Monday, October 1, 2007 
11:00a.m. - 12:00p.m.

WithinWindows Sample Interface

Withindows: A Unified Framework for the Development of Desktop and Immersive User Interfaces (Dissertation Defense, Alex Hill)

Thursday, October 18, 2007 
11:00a.m. - 12:00p.m. 

Andrew B. Raij will discuss the development and recent advances of the Virtual OSCE (VOSCE). The VOSCE is a virtual experience that simulates a patient-doctor interview using highly interactive virtual humans. In the VOSCE, health professions students interact with life-sized virtual humans using speech and gesture. Through this interaction, students practice and learn interpersonal communication skills. VOSCE scenarios include a variety of patients (varied ethnicity, age, and gender) expressing conditions from abdominal pain to cranial nerve damage to breast mass screening. The VOSCE system was developed jointly by a research group of medical faculty, educators, and computer scientists at the University of Florida, Medical College of Georgia, and Keele University, School of Pharmacy. 

The presentation will emphasize current work into providing realistic patient interactions, including using real tools, physiological measures, mannequin simulators, and virtual instructors. Also, this talk will cover the results of recent studies that explore racial / ethnicity biases, after-action reviews, communication skills, validity, component evaluation, and high anxiety interactions (sexual history and abnormal findings) with virtual humans. 

Biography 
Andrew B. Raij is a Ph.D. candidate in the Computer and Information Sciences and Engineering Department at the University of Florida. His research areas include computer graphics, computer vision, human-computer interaction and virtual reality. Raij graduated from Northwestern University with a B.S. (2001) degree in Computer Science, and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a MS (2003). His mentors include Drs. Benjamin Watson and Ian Horswill (B.S.), Henry Fuchs, Herman Towles, and Marc Pollefeys (M.S.), and Benjamin Lok (Ph.D.). For more information, please visit <a href="http://www.eng.usf.edu/~raij/">www.cise.ufl.edu/~raij</a>.

Medical student using

Virtual Humans for Interpersonal Interaction Education

Apple :: Science :: Profiles 
The Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago has been the source of many widely used visualization tools, including the well-known CAVE environment. 

Corewall, a software / hardware solution developed under an NSF grant, enables geoscientists to store and view images of scanned cores at high resolutions. 

Co-principal EVL investigators Andy Johnson and Luc Renambot, working with graduate students James Lee and Julian Yu-Chung Chen, combined Mac workstations and Apple Cinema displays with Corewall&rsquo;s Corelyzer core analysis software to provide tiled, high-resolution viewing platforms. 

&ldquo;The introduction of the 30-inch Apple Cinema Displays made creating tiled displays with fewer screens much easier,&rdquo; says Jason Leigh, Director of EVL. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s great to have so much aggregate resolution on one big display. The standard Corewall configuration is now two 30-inch Apple Cinema Displays with 8 megapixels of resolution.&rdquo; 

Other software in the Corewall suite, developed at other institutions under the same NSF grant, provide a database for the storage of annotation data, a browser for locating cores of interest at websites worldwide, and a system for the geographic correlation of cores drilled in proximity to each other. 

The CoreWall project development team includes researchers from the Lacustrine Core Repository at the University of Minnesota, the Borehole Research Group at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, and INSTAAR at the University of Colorado.

Dr. Larry Krissek (The Ohio State University) in front of Corelyzer

Visualization for Geoscientists

by Eli Ortiz 
Chicago Flame On-line 
Issue date: 10/15/07 Section: Features 

The Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) hosted an open house for perspective students and their families on Monday. Throughout the open house, EVL discussed the many projects that are currently being researched and developed. One project that stood out from the rest is the Lambda Table, a table that displays an image or program that can be manipulated like a touch-screen computer. 

The Lambda Table has been in development by the EVL for over two years now. This table consists of six 30-inch Dell LCD monitors which combined has a resolution of over 24 million pixels. This results in a very sharp image in a relatively large area. What makes the Lambda Table so unique is how it incorporates its high resolution with its hands-on applications. 

There are many applications that are currently being developed for the Lambda Table. These applications include high-resolution microscopy images, aerial maps, the Visible Human and the Rain Table. 

&ldquo;The Visible Human application can be used in replacement of expensive cadavers,&rdquo; said Senior Research Programmer Lance Long. 

This application allows the user to dissect a human body without having to actually touch a body. Once a cadaver has been used, it cannot be used again. The Visible Human application allows students to do as much exploring and learning as necessary without having to find a replacement cadaver each time. 

The Visible Human application and the other applications are controlled by using a system of cameras and infrared light to track pucks with reflective markers. These pucks are similar to computer mice. 

&ldquo;Each of these pucks has a special pattern of markers,&rdquo; said EVL Ph.D. graduate student Hyejung Hur. Hur is currently working on the tracking of each device to make sure the cameras see each device accurately. She explained that one puck may be used to zoom in on an area of a map while another is used to pan and rotate the map. It is important these pucks can be distinguished and their locations are seen on the table accurately. These pucks and infrared cameras allow the user to interact with the applications on the Lambda Table. 

The Rain Table is an application in which any user can observe what would happen when rain falls in a certain area. Dmitri Svistula, an EVL graduate student, is responsible for the development of the Rain Table. This application allows the user to move around the puck on the table, causing rain to fall on an accurate topographical map of a certain area. The rain then flows according to the location of hills, ridgelines, and rivers. The application simulates the path in which the rainwater would travel and eventually where the water would drain. 

This application is beneficial when dealing with natural disasters. It allows the user to see what areas might be in danger when flooding or a heavy rain occurs. 

Currently the Rain Table application is being developed for the Minnesota Science Museum. The National Science Foundation is funding the Rain Table. This application hopes to educate the public on erosion and also help prevent natural disasters. The Rain Table will be the first application that will be put to use in coordination with the Lambda Table at a public museum.

The Lambda Table Allows for the Exploration of Multiple Visualizations Simultaneously

EVL&rsquo;s Lambda Table puts science at your fingertips

Investigators: Tim Lenoir (PI), John Madden, Cathy Davidson 
Senior Personnel: Rachael Brady 

Knowledge of how to support the growth and diffusion of scientific knowledge and technological innovation is critical for creating effective environments for education, research, and economic development. The ecology of social, knowledge, and technological networks significantly affects who has access to them, both topically and temporally. 

A key problem of interest to federal policy makers, university research administrators, and regional planners is the role and impact of federal funding of scientific research in the stimulation of economic growth. 

Aggregate input-output scenarios combined with anecdotal evidence are most frequently used in such discussions. 

However, we live in an era in which rapid formation of flexible transdisciplinary collaborations involving close interaction among numerous scientific and engineering areas of research in close working relationships with industry have become critical to both scientific and industrial development. 

Hence, it becomes imperative to understand the local conditions and optimal configurations favoring successful interdisciplinary work in academic research settings and the transfer of knowledge to industry. 

Knowledge and technology diffusion in a dynamically evolving ecology of networks (e.g., social, co-author, paper-citation, patent, and funding networks) are complex, and do not yield their secrets to a single methodology. 

The proposed project will address this issue by linking sophisticated analytical tools for identifying and clustering closely related documents with visualization techniques that enable users to understand complex diffusion processes. 

The visualizations, called &ldquo;Knowledge Domain Visualizations (KDVs)&rdquo; aim to communicate the results of the data analyses and to support the interpretation, discovery, understanding, and management of complex data sets. 

Knowledge domain visualizations are a special kind of Information Visualization that exploit powerful human vision and spatial cognition to help humans mentally organize and electronically access and manage large, complex information spaces. 

Unlike scientific visualizations, KDVs are created from data that have no spatial reference, such as papers, patents, and grants stored in digital libraries. 

KDVs use sophisticated data analysis and visualization techniques to objectively identify major research areas, experts, institutions, grants, papers, journals, etc., in a domain of interest. 

They can be used to gain an overview of a knowledge domain; to study its homogeneity, import-export factors, and relative speed; to track the emergence and evolution of topics; or to help identify the most productive as well as new research areas.

Visualizing Networks of Innovation Proposal

Cathy N. Davidson

Visualizing Networks of Innovation - Cathy N. Davidson, Duke University

November 7, 2007 

Broadcasting Live from Chicago in High-Definition, It&rsquo;s Video Game Design Class! 

UIC Researchers Probing New Modes of Creative Instruction and Collaboration Enabled by Gigabit R&amp;E Networks 

CHICAGO - This semester, University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) computer science professor Jason Leigh is teaching a video game design course at UIC and remotely at Louisiana State University (LSU) using high-definition (HD) video streaming over the 10 Gigabit-per-second (Gbps) Louisiana Optical Network Initiative (LONI) between Chicago and Baton Rouge. 

At LSU, Leigh&rsquo;s high-resolution image fills a large HD projection display equipped with a two-way audio channel, where students, overseen by LSU associate professor of computer science Gabrielle Allen and professor of composition and digital music Stephen Beck, follow the same syllabus and course requirements as their UIC classmates. At UIC, Leigh and his students see and interact with LSU students. 

Leigh accepted LSU&rsquo;s invitation to teach his class remotely, as he saw an opportunity to understand how to offer a distributed course where classroom activity and content are extremely dynamic and require the use of high-resolution media. 

&ldquo;How do you demonstrate video games that have HD graphics and sound to remote sites as part of a regular classroom activity?&rdquo; asked Leigh. &ldquo;How do you teach the subtle nuances of interaction, over distance, when interaction requires use of physical devices, such as a special game controller? How can students work on team projects together separated by long distances and time zones? Moreover, how do you make remote education compelling and effective?&rdquo; 

Leigh, in his role as director of UIC&rsquo;s Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), currently researches advanced cyberinfrastructure tools and techniques to foster scientific collaboration over distance. He wanted to understand how these tools can transfer over to the classroom, to not only teach specialized subject matter, but train the next-generation work force to support and advance cyberinfrastructure. 

&ldquo;I want the classroom to have the same full-scale real-time telepresence quality that we are developing for the research community,&rdquo; said Leigh. &ldquo;Computer graphic images are so visually intensive and engaging, that if I solve problems at this level, it will be much easier to adapt the methodology to other courses and areas of research.&rdquo; 

Leigh&rsquo;s video game design course involves creative teamwork, high-resolution graphics, guest lectures from industry experts, and interactivity. HD captures the subtle nuances of interaction with high-resolution graphics over distance, especially when the interaction requires use of physical devices such as a special game controller. 

Currently, the teams use online discussion groups, though future classes will experiment with more dynamic environments. For example, EVL is developing a &ldquo;Cyber-Commons&rdquo; concept that Leigh believes will replace the traditional computer labs where students work individually on homework assignments. These Cyber-Commons will link students in virtual space much like many popular social networking sites, but with advanced technologies that allow virtual presence and interactive tools that foster high-quality collaboration and projects over high-speed networks. 

Today&rsquo;s schools are collaborating in order to compete - to export and/or import renowned talent from other schools to make their students more competitive when searching for jobs. LSU sought out Leigh, a visualization and video gaming expert, to teach his game-oriented graphics class this semester, to support an initiative for a new campus wide curricula in digital media. 

Last spring, LSU professor Thomas Sterling, an expert on high-performance (HPC) computing, taught the first HD video broadcast, distributed HPC course both locally and to other schools in the U.S., lecturing students in Louisiana, Arkansas, North Carolina and the Czech Republic. The HD-enhanced streaming provided a highly engaging experience where students could easily listen to the professor&rsquo;s lectures and clearly see supplemental materials being broadcast. 

Leigh&rsquo;s game class transmission goes out from a classroom at EVL over I-WIRE, a dedicated 10 Gbps network that connects universities and research institutions within the state of Illinois. I-WIRE connects EVL to the StarLight optical exchange in Chicago, where EVL connects to LONI, which is deployed on the National LambdaRail (NLR) infrastructure, as well as to other regional, national and international networks. Network access and HD capability at LSU is provided by the LSU Center for Computation &amp; Technology. 

About University of Illinois at Chicago, Electronic Visualization Laboratory 
The Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) is a graduate research laboratory specializing in the design and development of high-resolution visualization and virtual-reality display systems, collaboration software for use on multi-gigabit networks, and advanced networking infrastructure. It is a joint effort of UIC&rsquo;s College of Engineering and School of Art and Design, and represents the oldest formal collaboration between engineering and art in the country offering graduate MS, PhD and MFA degrees. EVL has received worldwide recognition for developing the original CAVE&trade; and ImmersaDesk&reg; virtual reality systems; and, more recently, the 105-Megapixel LambdaVision tiled display and Varrier autostereoscopic display. EVL is a founding member of StarLight the Global Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF) and the Global Lambda Visualization Facility (GLVF), and with Calit2 / UCSD is a leading institution working on the NSF-funded OptIPuter project. 

About Louisiana State University Center for Computation &amp; Technology <a href="http://www.cct.lsu.edu">www.cct.lsu.edu</a> 
The LSU Center for Computation &amp; Technology, or CCT, is an interdisciplinary center, uniting faculty from departments across LSU who use the advanced cyberinfrastructure available through CCT to conduct research in a variety of fields, such as physics, computer science and digital art. CCT advances LSU&rsquo;s Flagship Agenda and promotes economic development for the state by using computational applications to aid research and develop solutions that benefit academia and industry.

Jason Leigh teaches the EVL Gaming Seminar

UIC Researchers Probing New Modes of Creative Instruction and Collaboration Enabled by Gigabit R&amp;E Networks

EVL faculty Jason Leigh, Associate Professor of Computer Science and co-Director of EVL, and Daniel Sauter, Assistant Professor School of Art &amp; Design join Annette Valenta, Associate Dean for Health, Informatics anc Technology to participate in UIC&rsquo;s Fifth Brown Bag Interdisciplinary Lunch. Panelist with conduct informal presentations to engage an open group discussion with attendees focusing on visualization in arts, medicine, engineering and teaching. 

The event is sponsored by the Provost and the Vice Chancellor for Research in an effort to foster a more collaborative environment for interdisciplinary research at UIC. Topics for the Brown Bag Lunches are selected by the Research Advisory Council. 

For more information about the Brown Bag Lunches, please contact Emilie Sauvee at esauvee@uic.edu.

5th Brown Bag Interdisciplinary Lunch: Visualization

UC SAN DIEGO NEWS 
March 31, 2008 

Argentine Researcher Helps Leading U.S. Wireless Company Develop Tomorrow&rsquo;s Cell Phones 

<a href="http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/science/03-08JavierGirado.asp">Please click this link to view the full text article</a> 

Former Calit2 Staff Researcher at UC San Diego Was &ldquo;Born an Engineer&rdquo; 

Javier Girado has come a long way since being unable to pay his rent as an electronics researcher in Argentina. After losing all his savings not once but three times in the financial collapses of the Argentine economy, Girado moved to the United States for his Ph.D. and eventually landed at the University of California, San Diego doing research at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2). But early this year, Girado got an offer he couldn&rsquo;t refuse: to work in the private sector at roughly double his academic salary. 

Now Girado is working at QUALCOMM Inc., one of the top 100 employers in the country (according to Fortune magazine). He received stock and a signing bonus, and above all, he gets to continue doing what he loves best. &ldquo;My passion is research,&rdquo; says Girado. &ldquo;I am a practical person and I want to solve problems. I think I was born an engineer.&rdquo;

Javier Girado&rsquo;s research at Calit2 included computer vision-based head tracking for the Personal Varrier, a true-3D teleconferencing system.

EVL Alumni Javier Girado Helps QUALCOMM Develop Tomorrow&rsquo;s Cell

At TeraGrid &rsquo;08 Conference, UC San Diego&rsquo;s Smarr Urges University Campuses to Remove Network Bottlenecks to Supercomputer Users 

San Deigo, CA and Las Vegas, NV, June 11, 2008 - In a keynote talk at the TeraGrid &rsquo;08 Conference, the director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) said today that all the pieces are in place for a revolution in the usability of remote high-performance computers to advance science across many disciplines. Toward that end, he urged scientists to create end-to-end dedicated lightpaths connecting remote supercomputers to their labs, greatly enhancing their local capability to visually analyze massive data generated by TeraGrid&rsquo;s terascale to petascale computers. 

&ldquo;The last ten years have established the state, regional, national, and global optical networks needed for this revolution, but the bottleneck is on the user&rsquo;s campus,&rdquo; said Larry Smarr, director of Calit2, a partnership of UC San Diego and UC Irvine. However, Smarr said, there now is a clear path forward to removing this last bottleneck so that end users of the National Science Foundation-funded TeraGrid can begin to adopt these advanced technologies. 

&ldquo;The NSF-funded OptIPuter project [<a href="http://www.optiputer.net">www.optiputer.net</a>] has been exploring for six years how user-controlled, wide-area, 1- or 10-Gbps Internet protocol (IP) lightpaths - termed lambdas - on fiber optics can provide direct uncongested access to global data repositories, scientific instruments and high-performance computational resources from the researchers&rsquo; Linux clusters in their campus laboratories,&rdquo; said Smarr. &ldquo;This research is now being rapidly adopted because U.S. universities are beginning to acquire lambda access through state or regional optical networks interconnected with the National LambdaRail, the Internet2 Dynamic Circuit Network, and the Global Lambda Integrated Facility.&rdquo; 

Led by Calit2, the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), and the University of Illinois at Chicago&rsquo;s Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), the OptIPuter ties together the efforts of researchers from over a dozen campuses. &ldquo;The OptIPuter essentially completes the Grid program,&rdquo; said Smarr. &ldquo;In addition to allowing the end user to discover, reserve, and integrate remote computers, storage, and instruments, the OptIPuter enables the user to do the same for dedicated lambdas, creating a high-performance LambdaGrid.&rdquo; 

A key OptIPuter technology, the OptIPortal, was prototyped by EVL and developed by Calit2 under the NSF-funded OptIPuter partnership. The OptIPortal is a networked and scalable, high-resolution LCD tiled display system, driven by a PC cluster. Designed for the user&rsquo;s laboratory, each OptIPortal can be constructed with commodity commercial displays and processors. While most of the PC clusters run Linux, some run on Mac (Calit2@UCI and UCSD&rsquo;s SIO) or on Windows (UCSD&rsquo;s NCMIR) clusters. 

&ldquo;OptIPortals are the appropriate termination device for 10Gbps lightpaths, allowing the end user to choose the right amount of local storage, compute, and graphics capacity needed for their application,&rdquo; said Smarr. &ldquo;In addition, the tiled walls provide the scalable pixel real estate necessary to analyze visually the complexity of supercomputing runs.&rdquo; 

The OptIPuter project prefers OptIPortal clusters to run on SDSC&rsquo;s Rocks, an open-source Linux cluster distribution that enables end users to easily build computational clusters, grid endpoints and visualization tiled-display walls. Rocks is developed under an NSF-funded SDCI project led by SDSC&rsquo;s Philip Papadopoulos, also a co-principal investigator on the OptIPuter project. 

OptIPortals range in size from four to 60 tiles, and provide screen resolutions ranging from 8 million pixels to the over &frac14;-billion-pixel HIPerSpace wall - the highest-resolution display system in the world, located in the Calit2 building on the UCSD campus. 

To handle multi-gigabit data streams, OptIPuter researchers at EVL developed the Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment (SAGE). Separately, Professor Falko Kuester&rsquo;s UCSD Calit2 lab developed Cluster GLX, which allows OpenGL applications to be displayed on a visualization cluster like a tiled display. OptIPortal systems are now operating in over two dozen institutions in the United States and internationally. 

To make effective use of the 10Gbps lightpaths from the TeraGrid resources to the campus gateways, Smarr said &ldquo;the user&rsquo;s campus must invest in the critical &lsquo;missing link&rsquo; blocking widespread adoption of the OptIPuter / OptIPortal metacomputer - the equivalent of city &lsquo;data freeway&rsquo; systems of switched optical fibers connecting the campus gateway to specific buildings and inside the buildings to the user&rsquo;s lab.&rdquo; 

For example, UC San Diego has over 45 installed 10Gbps channels crisscrossing the campus - going up to 60 channels by the end of 2008. Geographically, these are located in seven different buildings, including 17 laboratories within these buildings. This vision was made possible with funds provided by the campus and an NSF-funded Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) grant Quartzite, which has SDSC&rsquo;s Papadopoulos as PI and Calit2&rsquo;s Smarr as one of the co-PIs. 

&ldquo;Quartzite provides the &lsquo;golden spike&rsquo; which allows completion of end-to-end 10Gbps lightpaths running from TeraGrid sites to the remote user&rsquo;s lab. When we were conceptualizing the OptIPuter seven years ago, I always thought that remote supercomputer users would provide the killer applications,&rdquo; said Smarr, the founding director in 1985 of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). 

&ldquo;TeraGrid users are located in research campuses across the nation, but they all share the characteristic that they need to carry out interactive visual analysis of massive datasets generated by a remote supercomputer,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I believe that we will see early adopters step forward in the next year to set up prototypes of this cyberarchitecture.&rdquo; 

Smarr described the work of one such early adopter, Michael Norman, UCSD Professor of Physics, recently named SDSC&rsquo;s Chief Scientific Officer. Norman is designing an OptIPortal in the new SDSC building, to be dedicated in October 2008. It will be connected over the UCSD optical complex described above to the TeraGrid 10Gbps backbone and National LambdaRail and used to visualize results from his cosmology simulations on the NSF&rsquo;s Petascale Track II machines at the TACC and at the NICS. 

Smarr also described how with the integration of high definition and digital cinema video streams, which easily fit inside of the 10Gbps lightpath, the OptIPuter architecture is rapidly creating an OptIPlanet Collaboratory in which multiple scientists can analyze a complex dataset while seeing and talking to each other as if they were physically in the same room. The most recent addition to the growing network - dubbed the &ldquo;OzIPortal&rdquo; - was deployed at the University of Melbourne earlier this year. 

&ldquo;After a decade of research carried out at dozens of institutions, we are seeing the OptIPuter take off on a global basis,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I look forward to working with many of the TeraGrid &rsquo;08 participants as they become early adopters of this innovative, high performance cyberinfrastructure-rebalancing the local analysis and network connectivity with the awesome growth NSF has made possible in the emerging petascale computers.&rdquo; 

In addition to Smarr and Papadopoulos, co-principal investigators on the OptIPuter initiative include Calit2&rsquo;s Thomas DeFanti; Jason Leigh, from the University of Illinois at Chicago; and Mark Ellisman, from UC San Diego. The project manager is Maxine Brown, from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Andrew Chien, now Vice President of Research at Intel, served as the system software architect while he was at UCSD. 

<a href="http://www.optiputer.net">The OptIPuter</a> project including 250 reports and publications. 

Related Links 
<a href="http://www.calit2.net">California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2)</a> 
<a href="http://www.sdsc.edu">San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC)</a> 
SDSC Rocks Project 
<a href="http://www.sagecommons.org">EVL</a> 
<a href="http://www.nlr.net">National LambdaRail</a> 
<a href="http://www.internet2.edu/network/dc">Internet2 Dynamic Circuit Network</a> 
<a href="http://www.teragrid.org">TeraGrid</a> 
<a href="http://www.nsf.gov">National Science Foundation</a> 

Media Contacts: 
Doug Ramsey, Calit2 Communications 
dramsey@ucsd.edu 
858.822.5825 

Laura Wolf, EVL / UIC 
laura@evl.uic.edu 
312.996.3002 

Warren R. Froelich, SDSC Communications 
froelich@sdsc.edu 
858.822.3622 

Jan Zverina, SDSC Communications 
jzverina@sdsc.edu 
858.534.5111

Calit2 director Larry Smarr (left) with NCMIR director Mark Ellisman in front of an early OptIPortal at Calit2 on the UCSD campus.

Optical Network is Key to Next-Generation Research Cyberinfrastructure

EVL PhD candidate and researcher Robert Kooima participates in the 19th International Planetarium Society Conference (Adler Planetarium &amp; Astronomy Museum and Hyatt Regency McCormick Place, Chicago) presenting his research in real-time GPU rendering. The results of Kooima&rsquo;s research and collaboration with Adler&rsquo;s Doug Roberts and Mark SubbaRao on the application of these techniques to digital dome technology is the focus of this talk.

IPS2008 Presentation

Five sides of a cube map showing Adler&rsquo;s Mars Transporter Exhibit. The dimmed areas fall outside the dome view.

IPS2008: Explore the Edge

Jason Leigh delivers a lecture to Osaka University students titled: Global Cyber-Commons: Supporting Global Collaborative Research, Development and Education using Cyber-Infrastructure-Enhanced Environments. 

This Pacific Rim International UniverSity (PRIUS) project is promoted by Osaka University, and resulted from the acceptance of the project proposal to the educational program structured by MEXT in 2005, &ldquo;The Promotion Program of internationalization in University Education.&rdquo; The goal of the project is the nurturing of human resources who have the ability to head up a team of researchers and scientists with strong leadership and then contribute to the advancement in 21st science and technology from a global perspective. Also, the establishment of an educational program for achieving the goal is aimed through international collaboration with
oversea universities and scientific institutions. In particular, the educational program focuses on the interdisciplinary area of information science and other science such as life science. 

Lecture Abstract: 
Thinking and working globally is now more than ever, crucial in research, education and business. Today&rsquo;s most challenging problems, such as Global Warming, can only be solved through the collaboration of experts from a broad range of fields and the fusion of enormous and disparate pieces of information derived from modern cyber-infrastructure. The concept of Cyber-Commons derives from the traditional notion of a &ldquo;Commons&rdquo; - a publicly shared space in which people can socialize. By creating computationally enhanced Commons spaces we envision a new way for people to work together that allows them to interact with information derived from cyber-infrastructure and with one another over great distances.

Jason Leigh, Associate Professor, Computer Science Director, EVL

Pacific Rim International University lecture at Osaka University

NICT (National Institute of Information and Communications Technology) has awarded the University of Illinois at Chicago, Electronic Visualization Laboratory the JGN2 Award for excellence in utilizing the JGN2 research and development testbed network. EVL is recognized for its research in advanced networking and application development with this award for contribution to the Super-High Definition Digital Image Network Applications and Evaluations (CineGrid).

EVL Receives JGN2 Award

Darshan Bhatt defends his master&rsquo;s thesis Thursday, August 28, at 11am in the EVL presentation space Room 2068. 

WallCology: Design of a Simulation Engine for Learners&rsquo; Embodied Inquiry in Population Ecology 
WallCology is a population ecology simulation built on the Embedded Phenomena framework. The primary motivation for the creation of WallCology is to bring an engaging and authentic means of studying ecology in the classroom with technologies that are readily available in most classrooms. WallCology, currently in its third iteration and has been studied in three different classrooms. Student and teacher feedback from these studies have helped to continuously modify and expand the simulation. 

Advisor: Tom Moher

WallCology: Design of a Simulation Engine (PDF)

WallScope in Classroom

Darshan Bhatt Presents Computer Science Masters Thesis WallCology

The September 2008 issue of Campus Technology carries a higher education brief of EVL&rsquo;s recently awarded National Science Foundation major research instrumentation grant. 

The Brief States: 
&ldquo;Look Mom, No Goggles or Gloves! 
The Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago is building a high-end virtual reality device with a major research instrumentation grant of $450,000 from the National Science Foundation (<a href="http://www.nsf.gov">www.nsf.gov</a>). The device, called the OmegaTable, is a modular multisensory touch tabletop for interactive exploration of visual 2D and 3D data (and follows in the footsteps of its predecessor, the LambdaTable). The OmegaTable allows users to engage in visualization without special goggles, gloves or handheld controllers, opening up a range of possibilities for research and instruction.&rdquo;

EVL LambdaTable

September 2008 Issue of Campus Technology Showcases EVL&rsquo;s LambdaTable

Read Calit2&rsquo;s complete press release at: 
<a href="http://www.calit2.net/newsroom/article.php?id=1396">www.calit2.net/newsroom/article.php?id=1396</a> 

San Diego, Oct. 9, 2008 - How can super-fast networking among research institutions in California help scientists make new discoveries? Researchers, campus administrators and networking infrastructure officials converged on the University of California, San Diego in September to find out. 

Taking advantage of the statewide, fiber-based California Research &amp; Education Network (CalREN) and campus fiber-optic connections in and out of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) building on the UC San Diego campus, the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) held a two-day workshop showcasing end-to-end advanced scientific applications enabled by CalREN&rsquo;s high-performance &ldquo;experimental-developmental&rdquo; (CalREN-XD) and &ldquo;high performance &amp; research&rdquo; (CalREN-HPR) infrastructure. 

&ldquo;We brought together the community in order to educate researchers in a variety of disciplines about new cyberinfrastructure technologies to enable new ways of doing science,&rdquo; said Jim Dolgonas, president of the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC). &ldquo;We expect to continue doing these types of workshops, because they give domain scientists very concrete examples of how their colleagues are benefiting from access to California&rsquo;s considerable investment in a world-class networking infrastructure.&rdquo; 

CalREN is owned, designed, and operated by CENIC, which was formed in 1997 by the state&rsquo;s educational community in order to ensure that their institutions would benefit from the explosion in networking technology. The CalREN fiber-optic backbone stretches 2,700 miles throughout the state, supported by dark-fiber and lines leased from telecommunications carriers which penetrate into every county in California. CalREN connects all of the state&rsquo;s public K-20 research and education institutions as well as a significant number of private and independent institutions to one another and to the world - at astonishing speeds.

EVL co-director Jason Leigh (far left) demonstrates &ldquo;Visualcasting.&rdquo;

California Scientists Demonstrate How to Use Advanced Fiber-Optic Backbone for Research

Many inter-related planetary height map and surface image map data sets exist, and more data are collected each day. Broad communities of scientists require tools to compose these data interactively and explore them via real-time visualization. While related, these data sets are often unregistered with one another, having different projection, resolution, format, and type. I present a GPU-centric approach to the real-time composition and display of unregistered-but-related planetary-scale data. 

This approach employs a GPU process to tessellate spherical height fields. It uses a render-to-vertex-buffer technique to operate upon polygonal surface meshes in image space, allowing geometry processes to be expressed in terms of image processing. With height and surface map data processing unified in this fashion, a number of powerful composition operations may be universally applied to both. Examples include adaptation to non-uniform sampling due to projection, seamless blending of data of disparate resolution or transformation regardless of boundary, and the smooth interpolation of levels of detail in both geometry and imagery. Issues of scalability and precision are addressed, giving out-of-core access to giga-pixel data sources, and correct rendering at sub-meter scales. 

Presentation and Demonstration in The Adler Planetarium&rsquo;s Definiti Space Theater begins promptly at 6pm.

VR

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