A Cyber-Commons is a technology-enhanced meeting room on a university campus that supports local and distance collaboration and promotes group-oriented problem solving. It is a next-generation computer science resource that relies upon advanced networking and multiple high-definition (HD) displays to transform the traditional computer lab / classroom filled with terminals - to a work environment that facilitates and encourages group collaboration. 

Envisioned by EVL director Jason Leigh and Computer Science faculty member Andy Johnson, the space is designed to connect students with advanced technologies and tools in virtual space with one another. The Cyber-Commons is a direct outgrowth of EVL&rsquo;s collaborative research focused on the development of technologies and tools for scientists linked via high-speed networks. 

The Cyber-Commons is an experimental space that will likely evolve as student needs change and technology advances. The current Cyber-Commons installation in the Computer Science department at UIC is equipped and networked to run HD videoconferencing and cabled to allow students to plug personal laptops into the HD displays. Students can now see and talk to remote collaborators in near life-size using an HD video conferencing system, and simultaneously share information to work on joint projects. 

The components of the Cyber-Commons can be altered and enhanced as needed; increasing network bandwidth and the number of HD displays could enable more participants and more interaction with high-resolution scientific images stored in distributed databases. 

The goal of the Cyber-Commons is to teach students how to collaborate - to solve problems together - both within a university and between universities. Rapid proliferation of Cyber-Commons to computer science departments at other institutions is anticipated over the next five years.

Students collaborating in EVL Cyber-Commons.

Cyber-Commons

EDITOR&rsquo;S NOTE: <a href="http://sage2.sagecommons.org/2014/11/18/sage-bof-at-sc14/
">Download the SAGE&trade;/SAGE2&trade; BOF presentation at SC14</a> 

SAGE BIRDS OF A FEATHER (BOF): Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment (SAGE) for Global Collaboration 

Tuesday, November 18, 2014, 12:15PM - 01:15PM 
New Orleans Convention Center, Rooms 393-94-95 

SAGE2&trade;, the next-generation SAGE, was introduced. SAGE2 is browser-based and integrates cloud services, a multi-resolution image viewer, a stereoscopic image viewer, mirrored portals, and network streaming of high-resolution imagery. Like SAGE middleware, SAGE2 is a software framework that enables local and remote collaboration on scalable resolution display walls (from single monitors to a wall of tiled displays) by sharing diverse media content, including 2D and 3D visualizations and applications. One major benefit of browser-based software is that there is no installation requirement for users and it is inherently cross-platform. A user simply needs an up-to-date web browser on the device he/she wishes to use as an interaction tool for the wall. SAGE2 services are essentially brought to the user through the Cloud. 

This BOF provided a Forum for the SAGE/SAGE2 developers to meet with the the SAGE global user community and potential users; specifically: 
<ul>
<li>to introduce key SAGE/SAGE2 team members</li>
<li>to provide an overview of SAGE/SAGE2 roadmaps</li>
<li>to review SAGE/SAGE2 capabilities and applications</li>
<li>to highlight SAGE/SAGE2 research and education applications</li>
<li>to solicit feedback</li>
</ul>
 

In addition, SAGE2 demonstrations took place in the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) research booth on the exhibition floor. 

<a href="http://sage2.sagecommons.org/download/522/">SAGE2 Presentation</a> 
<a href="http://youtu.be/OSu_L6b4Czk">SAGE2 Video</a> 

Additional SAGE2 information: 
<a href="http://www.sagecommons.org">SAGE Website</a> 
<a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/sage2">&ldquo;NEW&rdquo; User Forum</a> 
<a href="https://bitbucket.org/sage2/sage2/issues">Post and Track Issues</a> 
<a href="https://bitbucket.org/sage2/sage2/wiki">Wiki Detailed Documentation</a> 
<a href="https://bitbucket.org/sage2/sage2">Source Code Download</a> 

SAGE and SAGE2 are trademarks of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees.

SAGE BOF at SC14 now posted online

SAGE, the Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment, is the defacto operating system for managing Big Data content on scalable-resolution tiled display walls, providing the scientific community with persistent visualization and collaboration services for global cyberinfrastructure. SAGE2, the next-generation SAGE, is a wholly new implementation of SAGE using state-of-the-art web and cloud technologies. SAGE2 better addresses the needs of contemporary collaborative projects, and has the potential to expand the SAGE user community because of its enhanced support for development and integration of multi-user applications and lower barrier to entry.

SAGE2 at the University of Sunshine Coast, Mechanical Engineering, CAVE2 Australia

SAGEnext: Next Generation Integrated Persistent Visualization and Collaboration Services for Global Cyberinfrastructure

EVL Director, Maxine D. Brown presents EVL's latest research in collaborative tools and technologies at Chicago's Illinois Institute of Technology, Tuesday, April 21, 2015, 12:30pm – 2:00pm. 
Insight Through Images: Visualization and Collaboration Technologies for Exploring Big Data 
Today, most professions rely on computers to generate, capture, filter, analyze, and visualize data. These troves of data are invaluable to scientists as they explore the raw information and evidence needed for new insights and discovery; however, making those insights is an ever more complicated task, as the scale and complexity of data continue to grow at unprecedented rates. This big data problem requires an advanced cyber infrastructure that includes big displays connected to big computational resources via big networks. The Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago specializes in the design and development of high-performance visualization, virtual-reality and collaboration display systems, and applications utilizing advanced networking. This presentation describes EVL&rsquo;s CAVE2 Hybrid Reality Environment and SAGE2 Scalable Amplified Group Environment and gives examples of how they are enhancing immersive simulation exploration and information-rich analysis and enabling scientific discovery through interdisciplinary collaboration.

Insight Through Images Presentation Slides

EVL researchers using ultra-high resolution tiled display to explore a data visualization.

In the Loop: Maxine D. Brown

EVL PhD candidate, Arthur Nishimoto presents his research in user-interface design for multi-user touch display environments, followed by an overview of CAVE2 virtual environments built with Unity3D. 
Touch screens have become a more common interface for everyday use. The most common of these are mobile phones, tablets, and kiosks. These devices are focused for use by one or two people. Over the past few years wall sized displays are increasingly being used for viewing and analyzing large amount of information in a collaborative environment. The approach to designing a multi-touch interface for use by multiple users on wall sized display environments is discussed. 
In addition, virtual reality applications and tools developed using the Unity game engine are presented. Special emphasis is placed on describinb the &ldquo;Hearts and Minds: The Interrogations Project&rdquo; - one of the first narrative art performances designed for CAVE2 that tells the story of American soldiers who over the course of their service in Iraq became torturers. &ldquo;Virtual Campus&rdquo; is also covered. It is a collaborative project created in conjunction with the University of Chicago (U of C) to explore the limitations of Unity and the CAVE2 System in rendering the U of C campus from an overview of campus down to interior details such as light switch panels.

Arthur Nishimoto Research Overview Slides

Arthur Nishimoto using his mulit-user touch interface on an EVL tiled display.

SAGE2 Multi-User Touch Centric Interface  and Unity3D in CAVE2: First Steps in a More Interactive Virtual World

EVL PhD candidate, Thomas Marrinan presents his research on SAGE2 (Scalable Amplified Group Environment). 
Abstract: Commercial software, such as Google Hangouts, Skype, and WebEx, has made significant strides to enhance remote collaboration between single users. Other systems, such as Oblong&rsquo;s Mezzanine, have enabled groups to collaborate over distance, but only when the display environment is cloned in all locations. These configurations are not always practical in the real world since collaboration is often interdisciplinary, with each discipline having a unique work environment suited for its needs. Marrinan is using SAGE2 as a platform to implement a scalable solution for viewing and interacting with arbitrary content, and develop and test various methods of synchronizing data across multiple sites. SAGE2 is the successor to SAGE, the Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment, which is a middleware to display and interact with an assortment of data-intensive information from multiple sources on displays of arbitrary size. In other words, SAGE2 allows collaborators to use any Scalable Resolution Shared Display (SRSD) from a single monitor to a large tiled display wall to act as a seamless window manager for applications such as a high-resolution image viewer, interactive mapping software, 3D model viewer, and multi-user notepad. 
Unlike video and audio, data-conferencing with fully synchronized content may not always be ideal. Groups or individuals may be analyzing different portions of the same data, and therefore desire asynchronous interactions in certain situations. Marrinan is conducting a user study comparing three methods of asynchronous data-conferencing. The first method is data-pushing, sending unsynchronized documents between locations, along with two video streams - one of the collaborators and one of the SRSD. The second method is data-duplication, where one section of the SRSD will contain the fully synchronized version of all data-conferencing content and a second portion of the SRSD will contain local unsynchronized copies of the data-conferencing content. The final method uses advanced data-synchronization options, where collaborators can choose which aspects of each shared application will be synchronized and which will be controlled independently. While SAGE2 is being used to develop and test these principles, the applications of the knowledge that will be gained can broadly apply to data-conferencing software in general.

Data-Intensive Remote Collaboration using Scalable Visualizations in Heterogeneous Display Spaces

SAGE2 running on EVL's tiled displayed.

PhD candidate Tommy Marrinan defends his dissertation on remote collaboration research. 
Committee: Andrew Johnson (chair and advisor) 
Luc Renambot, Angus Forbes, Steve Jones, Jason Leigh 
Abstract: 
Commercial software, such as Google Hangouts, Skype, and WebEx, has made significant strides to enhance remote collaboration between single users. Other systems, such as Oblong’s Mezzanine, have enabled groups to collaborate over distance, but only when the display environment is cloned in all locations. These configurations are not always practical in the real world since collaboration is often interdisciplinary, with each discipline having a unique work environment suited for its needs. I have used SAGE2, the Scalable Amplified Group Environment, as a platform to implement a scalable solution for viewing and interacting with arbitrary content, and developed and tested various methods of synchronizing data across multiple sites. SAGE2 is the successor to SAGE, the Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment, which is a middleware to display and interact with an assortment of data-intensive information from multiple sources on displays of arbitrary size. In other words, SAGE2 allows collaborators to use any Scalable Resolution Shared Display (SRSD) from a single monitor to a large tiled display wall to act as a seamless window manager for applications such as a high-resolution image viewer, interactive mapping software, 3D model viewer, and multi-user notepad. 
Unlike video and audio, data-conferencing with fully synchronized content may not always be ideal. Groups or individuals may be analyzing different portions of the same data, and therefore desire asynchronous interactions in certain situations. I have conducted a user study comparing three techniques of data-conferencing. The first technique was data-pushing, sending unsynchronized documents between locations, along with two video streams - one of 2 the collaborators and one of the SRSD. The second technique was data-duplication, where one section of the SRSD contained fully synchronized versions of all data-conferencing content and a second portion of the SRSD contained local unsynchronized copies of the data-conferencing content. The final technique was to use advanced data-synchronization options, where collaborators chose which aspects of each shared application were synchronized and which were controlled independently. While I used SAGE2 to develop and test these principles, the applications of the knowledge gained can broadly apply to data-conferencing software in general.

SAGE2&trade;: Scalable Amplified Group Environment for Global Collaboration Birds of a Feather (BOF) 
Tuesday, November 17 
12:15PM - 01:15PM 
Room: 13A 
SAGE2 is an innovative user-centered platform for small groups or large distributed teams to share and investigate large-scale datasets on tiled display systems in order to glean insights and discoveries. SAGE2 treats these displays as a seamless ultra-high-resolution desktop, enabling users to co-locate data from various sources and juxtapose content. SAGE2 was announced at SC14 last year; it is the next-generation SAGE (Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment), which has been the defacto operating system for managing Big Data content on tiled display walls, providing the scientific community with persistent visualization and collaboration services for global cyberinfrastructure. 
This BOF provided a Forum for SAGE2 developers to meet with the the SAGE/SAGE2 global user community and potential users; specifically: 
- to introduce key SAGE2 team members 
- to highlight SAGE2 research and education applications 
- to review SAGE2 capabilities and applications 
- to provide an overview of the SAGE2 roadmap 
In addition, SAGE2 demonstrations took place in the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) research booth on the exhibition floor, November 17-19, 2015. 
See the <a href="http://sage2.sagecommons.org/download/1403/">SAGE2 Presentation</a>. 
SAGE2 Videos (YouTube) 
- <a href="https://youtu.be/V9zGmQpaRUU">Introduction to SAGE2</a> 
- <a href="https://youtu.be/Zptnv35S7Ec
">CESNET SAGE2 application for mobile devices (in progress)</a> 
<a href="http://www.sagecommons.org">For more information on SAGE2.</a> 
SAGE and SAGE2 are trademarks of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees.

SAGE2 running on EVL&rsquo;s Cyber-Commons tiled display wall.

The SAGE2&trade; BOF presentation at SC15 is now posted online.

Commercial software, such as Google Hangouts, Skype, and WebEx, has made significant strides to enhance remote collaboration between single users. Other systems, such as Oblong&rsquo;s Mezzanine, have enabled groups to collaborate over distance, but only when the display environment is cloned in all locations. These configurations are not always practical in the real world since collaboration is often interdisciplinary, with each discipline having a unique work environment suited for its needs. I have used SAGE2, the Scalable Amplified Group Environment, as a platform to implement a scalable solution for viewing and
interacting with arbitrary content, and developed and tested various techniques for synchronizing data across multiple sites. SAGE2 is the successor to SAGE, the Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment, which is a middleware to display and interact with an assortment of data-intensive information from multiple sources on displays of arbitrary size. In other words, SAGE2 allows collaborators to use any Scalable Resolution Shared Display (SRSD) from a single monitor to a large tiled display wall to act as a seamless window manager for applications such as a high-resolution image viewer, interactive mapping software, 3D model
viewer, and multi-user notepad. 
Unlike video and audio, data-conferencing with fully synchronized content may not always be ideal. Groups or individuals may be analyzing different portions of the same data, and therefore desire unsynchronized interactions in certain situations. I have conducted user studies comparing three techniques of data-conferencing. The first technique was data-pushing, sending unsynchronized documents between locations, along with two video streams – one of the collaborators and one of the SRSD. The second technique was data-duplication, where one section of the SRSD contained fully synchronized versions of all data-conferencing content and a second portion of the SRSD contained local unsynchronized copies of the data-conferencing content. The final technique was to use advanced data-synchronization options, where collaborators chose which aspects of each shared application were synchronized and which were controlled independently. These studies aimed to answer three main research questions: 
1) Does providing continuously synchronized applications improve the quality of collaboration and awareness of the remote team? 
2) Can synchronizing applications provide remote teams the same quality of collaboration as local teams? 
3) Does the size of a shared display have an effect on the quality of collaboration and awareness of the remote team? 
While I used SAGE2 to develop and test these principles, the applications of the knowledge gained can broadly apply to data-conferencing software in general.

Mapping application used in the formal user study. Multiple users could interact simultaneously to manipulate the map, or add/remove markers.

SAGEBoard is an electronic whiteboard for tiled touch displays that can be used locally or shared between remote collaborators. An electronic whiteboard can combine the advantages of an electronic device with the fast paced interaction provided by a regular whiteboard, enhancing both solutions with new functions. Users can perform classic whiteboard actions such as drawing or writing free-handed on the screen using their finger or a stylus. They can use brushes to paint, and they can erase content. However, unlike on traditional whiteboards, users can also relocate content on the screen, insert figures and drawings, and save or load previous sessions. Moreover, everything can be shared between all the users, and more people can interact simultaneously, improving the collaborative task. 
SAGEBoard runs on multiple displays, and is integrated with other display-enabled applications; the application manages multiple simultaneous inputs, as well as the rendering of graphic elements on different sized displays. SAGEBoard is a lightweight networked solution that address any latency issues that might impact the interactive experience. 
This research explores human computer interaction issues - how people behave when collaborating on a shared touch enabled display, or deal with remotely controlled collaboration, since the whole application can be shared among both co-located and remote screens. A small scale user study was designed to analyze the advantages of using multi-touch displays over conventional keyboard and mouse configurations, as well as remote interaction using mobile touch displays.

User drawing on EVL&rsquo;s Cyber-Commons tiled display using SAGEBoard

SAGEBoard: a Whiteboard for Large Multitouch Displays

June 22, 2016 
Old Crow Smokehouse 
149 W Kinzie Street, Chicago, IL 
Research Associate Professor of Computer Science at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), Luc Renambot presents his research in interactive techniques and collaboration using advanced visualization displays and high-speed networking at the <a href="http://live.nodejs.org/events/chicago.html">&ldquo;Node.js Live - Chicago&rdquo;</a> 
Renambot directs a team of researchers at EVL developing SAGE2&trade;. SAGE2 is a Node.js and browser-based environment that creates a seamless ultra-high resolution desktop across a display wall (one to many displays). Users can wirelessly connect to the wall to interact with the system, transfer documents, manipulate applications and share their screen. Data visualization applications can be created quickly using 3rd party library such as D3.js, Snap, Vega, WebGL, and be integrated into the SAGE2 API.

SAGE2 Presentation Slides

SAGE2 presentation at &ldquo;Node.js Live - Chicago&rdquo;

Luc Renambot presents SAGE2&trade; at &ldquo;Node.js Live - Chicago&rdquo;

Newcity magazine is Chicago&rsquo;s only locally owned and operated cultural weekly, and has been covering Chicago&rsquo;s local scene for more than 25 years. It&rsquo;s current &ldquo;Best of Chicago&rdquo; issue just came out (Volume 31, No. 1359). The section on City Life lists many best things about Chicago, including &ldquo;Best place to get your geek on.&rdquo; Um, that would be the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago! The article is reproduced below. 
* * * * * * * * * * 
Best place to get your geek on 
The Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at UIC 
Cutting-edge research meets a massive wall made out of small screens that would make any hardcore videogame fan scream and a literal cave that opens up a highly immersive, surround-screen, surround-sound, virtual reality environment at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The lab brings together academics, designers, engineers, artists and mad scientists using technologies that bend reality off into unimaginable directions. EVL is the place where visualization, virtual reality and real-time interactive computer graphics are born. As if that were not enough, it was here that the computer graphics for the first &ldquo;Star Wars&rdquo; film were created in 1976. How cool is that? 
UIC College of Engineering, Department of Computer Science, 842 W. Taylor 
Best of Chicago 2016

Best of Chicago 2016

Newcity magazine rates UIC/EVL as &ldquo;Best place to get your geek on&rdquo;

The SC16 SAGE2™ BOF presentation is now posted <a href="http://sage2.sagecommons.org/2016/11/15/sage2-birds-of-a-feather-bof-2016/">online.</a> 
* * * * * * * * * * 
SAGE2&trade;: Scalable Amplified Group Environment for Global Collaboration Birds of a Feather (BOF) 
Tuesday, November 15, 2016, 12:15PM–01:15PM 
Salt Palace Convention Center, Room: 250-E, Salt Lake City, Utah 
SAGE2 is an innovative, user-centered, web-based platform that enables local and/or distributed teams to display, manage, share and investigate large-scale datasets on tiled display walls in order to glean insights and discoveries. SAGE2 enables users to easily display and juxtapose digital media (2D/3D charts, graphs, images, movies or documents) from a variety of sources. SAGE2, announced at SC14, is the next-generation SAGE (Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment), which was the defacto operating system for managing Big Data content on tiled display walls for almost a decade. SAGE2 provides the scientific community with persistent visualization and collaboration services for global cyberinfrastructure. 
This BOF provided a Forum for SAGE2 developers to meet with the the SAGE/SAGE2 global user community and potential users; specifically: 
<ul>
<li>to introduce key SAGE2 team members</li>
<li>to highlight SAGE2 research and education applications</li>
<li>to review SAGE2 capabilities and applications</li>
<li>to provide an overview of the SAGE2 roadmap</li>
<li>to solicit feedback</li></ul> 
In addition, SAGE2 demonstrations took place in the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) research booth on the exhibition floor, November 14-17, 2016. 
<a href=" http://sage2.sagecommons.org/download/1778/">SAGE2 Presentation</a> 
<a href="http://sage2.sagecommons.org">More information on SAGE2</a> 
SAGE and SAGE2 are trademarks of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees.

SC16 SAGE BOF Now Posted Online

Real world group-to-group collaboration often occurs between partially distributed interdisciplinary teams, with each discipline working in a unique environment suited for its needs. Groupware must be flexible so that it can be incorporated into a variety of workspaces in order to successfully facilitate this type of mixed presence collaboration. We have developed two new techniques for sharing and synchronizing multi-user applications between heterogeneous large-scale shared displays. The first new technique partitions displays into a perfectly mirrored public space and a local private space. The second new technique enables user-controlled partial synchronization, where different attributes of an application can be synchronized or controlled independently. This paper presents two main contributions of our work: 1) identifying deficiencies in current groupware for interacting with data during mixed presence collaboration, and 2) developing two multi-user data synchronization techniques to address these deficiencies and extend current collaborative infrastructure for large-scale shared displays. 
Author Keywords: Mixed presence collaboration; computer-supported cooperative work; large-scale displays; multi-user interaction; data synchronization. 
ACM Classification Keywords: H.5.3. Information Interfaces and Presentation: Group and Organization Interfaces: Computer-supported cooperative work, synchronous interaction.

Mixed presence collaboration using the dataduplication technique. The yellow highlight in each photo shows the shared portal on each shared display with synchronized applications and pointer icons.

Synchronized Mixed Presence Data-Conferencing Using Large-Scale Shared Displays

Classic visual analysis relies on a single medium for displaying and interacting with data. Large-scale tiled display walls, virtual reality using head-mounted displays or CAVE systems, and collaborative touch screens have all been utilized for data exploration and analysis. We present our initial findings of combining numerous display environments and input modalities to create an interactive multi-modal display space that enables researchers to leverage various pieces of technology that will best suit specific sub-tasks. Our main contributions are 1) the deployment of an input server that interfaces with a wide array of interaction devices to create a single uniform stream of data usable by custom visual applications, and 2) three real world use cases of leveraging multiple display environments in conjunction with one another to enhance scientific discovery and data dissemination. 
Author Keywords: Multiple Display Environments; multi-user interaction; collaboration; input devices; large-scale displays; virtual reality; multi-touch screens; motion capture. 
ACM Classification Keywords: H.5.2. User Interfaces: Input devices and strategies, user centered design.

Collaborators gather in front of a large-scale display to share research findings and utilize a multitouch digital whiteboard to brainstorm next steps to advance their work.

Interactive Multi-Modal Display Spaces for Visual Analysis

Mixed presence collaboration involves remote collaboration between multiple collocated groups. This paper presents the design and results of a user study that focused on mixed presence collaboration using large-scale tiled display walls. The research was conducted in order to compare data synchronization schemes for multi-user visualization applications. Our study compared three techniques for sharing data between display spaces with varying constraints and affordances. The results provide empirical evidence that using data sharing techniques with continuous synchronization between the sites lead to improved collaboration for a search and analysis task between remotely located groups. We have also identified aspects of synchronized sessions that result in increased remote collaborator awareness and parallel task coordination. It is believed that this research will lead to better utilization of large-scale tiled display walls for distributed group work. 
Author Keywords: Mixed presence collaboration; data-conferencing; multi-user interaction; large-scale displays. 
ACM Classification Keywords: H.5.3. [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: Group and Organization Interfaces: Computer-supported cooperative work, synchronous interaction, evaluation/methodology.

Teams of two engaged in mixed presence collaboration, working on finding a location to open a new coffee shop.

Mixed Presence Collaboration using Scalable Visualizations in Heterogeneous Display Spaces

In this paper, we investigate methods for improving networked musical collaboration by introducing game mechanics to musical performance. We present a novel audiovisual performance system, where multiple users contribute to an over-the-network performance that is mediated by a variety of game-like rules. User evaluations and audience feedback collected in both private performance and public concert contexts indicate the potential of game-like music environments for improving musical interaction and listener attention in networked computer music performances. 
Author Keywords: Networked music performance; game mechanics; audiovisual performance systems. 
ACM Classification Keywords: H.5.5 [Information interfaces and presentation.

A screencast from a performance with Monad v0.1 [6], which utilized a client-driven rewarding mechanism.

Using Game Mechanics to Facilitate Networked Musical Collaboration

SAGE2 is a user-centered platform for small groups or large distributed teams to access large-scale datasets from various sources and juxtapose, share and investigate content on tiled display walls. SAGE2 builds on SAGE (Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment), developed with NSF prior funding. With 69 sites worldwide since 2015, SAGE2 is having a transformative effect on data exploration, visualization and collaboration, making cyberinfrastructure more accessible to end users both in the laboratory and in the classroom.

SAGE2 Scalable Amplified Graphics Environment

We propose a &ldquo;Scalable Amplified Group Environment&rdquo; to enable large-scale human and data interaction and collaboration on High-Resolution Display Walls. To enable effective critical thinking and brainstorming sessions within the room and between distributed sites, we need new technologies that can be described as &ldquo;Collaboration as a Service&rdquo; (CaaS). 
CaaS features include: 
- On demand collaboration with dynamic resource allocation to support collaborative visualization sessions first within the room and then between several sites, 
- Enabling online large scale data analysis and visual analytics, 
- Support for many visualization types: local rendering (web-based) and hardware remote rendering transmitted as high-quality video streams (GPU-rendering and video compression in the cloud).

Collaboration as a Service?

JUNE 13, 2017 - Ryan Wolff and David Wolff, producers of the documentary web series &ldquo;The Good Stuff,&rdquo; recently completed a program on virtual-reality headsets, but &ldquo;as awesome as the experience was,&rdquo; says Ryan, &ldquo;it’s isolating. Wouldn&rsquo;t it be cool if there was a virtual-reality room you could share with other people, so your friends could actually see and experience what you&rsquo;re seeing? Could such a place actually exist? In Chicago? Five miles from where I live?&rdquo; 
Those questions prompted a visit to the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), to talk with Computer Science Associate Professor and EVL Director of Research Andy Johnson, and to see and experience the CAVE2 Hybrid Reality Environment. In their documentary &ldquo;Inside a Real Life Holodeck,&rdquo; Ryan exclaims, &ldquo;The idea of a room you can just walk into and have it simulate any environment that you want has been a big part of Sci Fi and fantasy series for a long time, except that this time...there&rsquo;s a real-life Holodeck sitting in an engineering building on a college campus.&rdquo; 
The 11 minute video also briefly talks about EVL&rsquo;s rich history: its early days when engineers and visual artists collaborated in a UIC lab then known as the Circle Graphics Habitat; its development of the Sayre glove--the first wired data glove and precursor of the Nintendo Power Glove; its role in creating the Death Star plans in the first Star Wars movie; and, its development of the original CAVE Automatic Virtual Environment. 
Andy Johnson understands the power of virtual reality; in the video, he describes his first experience in EVL&rsquo;s CAVE in the early 1990s as &ldquo;technology as magic.&rdquo; His interview is insightful, from his views of the current state of virtual reality, to various scientific applications that help researchers understand our world, to future implications of virtual reality in our society. 
Though all were in agreement that virtual-reality headsets are impressive, there is something special about the room-sized CAVE2&rsquo;s ability to let participants &ldquo;see people’s eyes, see their expressions, or know what they are pointing at or looking at in space.&rdquo; Andy Johnson elaborates that &ldquo;the lab…created a shared space where it’s the screens, the walls, that are active. So, you not only have a connection with the virtual space, but a strong connection between people.&rdquo; 
YouTube video: &ldquo;Inside a Real Life Holodeck&rdquo; 
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/L4gBCtfqZtU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

David Wolff of The Good Stuff inside UIC/EVL’s CAVE2 Hybrid Reality Environment, interacting with the Connectome neural network of the brain provided by the UIC Psychiatry Department.

Inside a Real Life Holodeck

Scheduling conferences is a common task in both research and industry, which requires relatively small groups to collaborate and negotiate in order to solve an often-large logistical problem with many nuances. For large conferences, the process can take days and it is traditionally a manual procedure performed using physical tools such as whiteboards and sticky notes. We present the design and implementation of StickySchedule, a multi-user application for use on interactive large-scale shared displays to better enable groups to organize large conference-scheduling data. To evaluate our tool, we present observations from novice users, and authentic use cases with expert feedback from organizers who are heavily involved in large conference scheduling. The main contributions of our work are documenting the collaborative and competitive aspects of conference scheduling, creating a tool that incorporates successful features and addresses identified issues with prior works, and verifying the usefulness of our tool by observing and discussing a variety of use cases, in both collocated and remote-distributed settings. 
Author Keywords: Large-scale displays; collaboration; multi-user interaction; conference scheduling. 
ACM Classification Keywords: H.5.3. Information interfaces and presentation (HCI): Group and Organization Interfaces; Computer-supported cooperative work.

Simulated organization committee scheduling a conference using StickySchedule. Interaction is supported from both personal devices (e.g. a mouse from one’s laptop) and touch directly on the large-scale shared display

StickySchedule: An Interactive Multi-user Application for Conference Scheduling on Large-scale Shared Displays

Just as NSF cyberinfrastructure produces greater volumes and varieties of data from data storage systems, online instrumentation and major computational resources like XSEDE and Blue Waters, advanced visualization instruments serve as the &ldquo;lenses&rdquo; of these data generators (similar to the telescopes and microscopes of yore), enabling researchers to peer into cyberspace to manage, access and analyze big data. 
Continuum is a cyberinfrastructure instrument that unifies high-resolution computer-enhanced group collaboration workspaces with arrays of ambient sensors, enabling users to collaborate with local and remote colleagues and their data more effectively by giving the room itself the ability to anticipate their needs, improve their interaction, and focus their time on discovery rather than the technology. Continuum is a digital assistant, benefiting global scientific collaboratories and providing a foundation for new computer science research. War rooms benefit collaboration because they support continuous interaction and awareness of team members, enable persistent information sharing, and encourage mobility among team members and information. A computer-enhanced war room, such as Continuum, which (1) connects distributed teams with their data, whether stored in the cloud or streamed from major computational resources over high-speed networks, (2) supports persistent digital artifacts, (3) enables ultra-high-resolution 2D and 3D stereoscopic digital media to be simultaneously viewed, and (4) supports ubiquitous and intuitive interaction, creates a powerful and easy-to-use information-rich environment in support of scientific discovery. 
Continuum is the culmination of the University of Illinois at Chicago’s (UIC) 20+ years experience developing interactive instruments, from the original CAVE in 1992, to the ultra-high-resolution LambdaVision tiled LCD wall in 2004, and the hybrid-reality CAVE2 in 2012. Each new generation of visualization instrumentation provided scientific communities with more advanced features Continuum development focuses on three areas: (1) transforming passive display walls that respond to user commands into attentive display walls that monitor the users in a room and anticipate their needs to improve their experience; (2) providing an alternative approach to constructing high-resolution visualization display walls using thin-border 4K passive stereo OLED displays that have impressive brightness, contrast, uniformity, off-axis viewing, and low reflectivity in brightly lit rooms; and (3) utilizing cloud computing to prototype future Continuum spaces that don’t require local high-end compute and display resources. Twelve funded research projects from local institutions, in Astronomy, Astrophysics, Biology,
Combustion, Geophysics, Neuroscience, Pathology, Physics, Psychiatry, and High Performance Computing, are poised to use Continuum for their data visualization needs. Continuum will open up new opportunities in computer science research at the intersection of large-scale data visualization, human-computer interaction, and high-speed networking. Continuum will also directly support 10 classes taught in the UIC Computer Science, Art and Design, and Biomedical Science departments.

Artist's rendering of Continuum space.

MRI - Development of Continuum: A Virtualized Attentive Environment for Amplified Collaboration

For those attending SC17 in Denver, Colorado, we will hold the &ldquo;SAGE2 9th Annual International SC BOF: Scalable Amplified Group Environment for Global Collaboration&rdquo; Birds of a Feather (BOF) meeting: 
* Thursday, November 16 
* 12:15PM - 01:15PM 
* Room: 503-504, Colorado Convention Center, Denver, CO 
* <a href="http://sc17.supercomputing.org/presentation/?id=bof141&sess=sess376">http://sc17.supercomputing.org/presentation/?id=bof141&sess=sess376</a> 
SAGE2 (Scalable Amplified Group Environment) is an innovative, open-source, web-based, user-centered platform for small groups or large distributed teams to share and jointly discuss digital media content on tiled displays in order to glean insights and discoveries. SAGE2 treats tiled displays as a seamless ultra-high-resolution desktop, enabling users to juxtapose content from various sources. SAGE2, like its predecessor SAGE (Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment), is the defacto operating system for managing Big Data on tiled walls, providing the scientific community with persistent visualization and collaboration services for global cyberinfrastructure. 
This BOF provides a Forum for SAGE2 developers to meet with the the SAGE/SAGE2 global user community and potential users; specifically: 
* to introduce key SAGE2 team members 
* to highlight SAGE2 research and education applications 
* to review SAGE2 capabilities and applications 
* to provide an overview of the SAGE2 roadmap 
* to solicit feedback 
To see SAGE2 demonstrations, visit us at the Center for Data Intensive Science/Open Commons Consortium research booth on the exhibition floor from Tuesday-Thursday, Booth # 1653. 
Together, we can advance scientific research and education by providing production-quality, community-driven, end-user open services for visualization and collaboration that utilize shared national and international cyberinfrastructure. 
See you at SC17! 
Jason Leigh 
Laboratory for Advanced Visualization & Applications (LAVA) 
University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa 
<a href="mailto:leighj@hawaii.edu">leighj@hawaii.edu</a> 
Maxine Brown and Luc Renambot 
Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) 
University of Illinois at Chicago 
<a href="mailto:maxine@uic.edu">maxine@uic.edu</a> 
SAGE2 receives major funding from the National Science Foundation (award #ACI-1441963). 
SAGE and SAGE2 are trademarks of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees. 
For more information, see: <a href="http://www.sagecommons.org">www.sagecommons.org</a>

SAGE2 9th Annual International SC BOF @ SC17

The SAGE2 team is demo&rsquo;ing SAGE2 during the SC17 research exhibition, booth #1653 (Center for Data Intensive Science/Open Commons Consortium Booth). 
For those attending SC17, come see firsthand SAGE2 v3&rsquo;s many new and advanced features, and talk with the key developers: 
* SAGE2Cloud: create and manage SAGE2 server instances in Docker containers 
* JupyterLab plugin: link your science workflows with SAGE2 using the next version of Jupyter 
* Performance monitoring: monitor performance of your server and display clients 
* A user management system 
* Unity3D apps (WebGL export) 
* Remote collaboration features: remote view, remote pointers 
* Voice commands 
* Better webviews and user interface 
These new features will all be reviewed during the <a href="http://sc17.supercomputing.org/presentation/?id=bof141&sess=sess376">SAGE2 BOF on Thursday, November 16, Room: 503-504, Colorado Convention Center.</a> 
Unfortunately, the BOF will take place during the last few hours of the exhibition, so we want to make you aware of the new features now so you have time to come see demos and talk to development team members from University of Illinois at Chicago and University of Hawaii at Manoa. 
Exhibition show hours are: 
* Tuesday, November 14: 10am - 6pm 
* Wednesday, November 15: 10am - 6pm 
* Thursday, November 16: 10am - 3pm 
For those who are not at SC17, we will be posting the BOF presentation and supporting videos of the more advanced features after the conference. 
SAGE2 team @ SC17, 
Jason Leigh, Dylan Kobayashi, Alberto Gonzalez Martinez, 
Laboratory for Advanced Visualization & Applications (LAVA) 
University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa 
<a href="mailto:leighj@hawaii.edu">leighj@hawaii.edu</a> 
Maxine Brown, Luc Renambot, Lance Long, Andrew Burks, Krishna Bharadwaj 
Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) 
University of Illinois at Chicago 
<a href="mailto:maxine@uic.edu">maxine@uic.edu</a> 
Francis Cristobal, Jared McLean 
University of Hawai’i at Hilo 
SAGE2 receives major funding from the National Science Foundation (award #ACI-1441963). 
SAGE and SAGE2 are trademarks of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees. 
For more information, see: <a href="http://www.sagecommons.org">www.sagecommons.org</a>

New, Advanced SAGE2 Features Being Demonstrated at SC17

OCTOBER 26, 2017 - Maxine Brown, director of the UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), participated in The Higher Education Campus Alliance for Advanced Visualization (THE CAAV) 2nd annual conference, held on the campus of University of Wyoming in Laramie. Brown was invited to give the keynote presentation &ldquo;Insight through Images: Visualization and Collaboration Technologies for Exploring Big Data,&rdquo; which presented an overview of EVL&rsquo;s work with Big Data researchers to develop advanced visualization and collaboration cyberinfrastructure that has Big Displays connected to Big Data Generators (supercomputers, data stores, and sensors) via Big Networks. 
THE CAAV is a volunteer-driven organization and has received support from Mechdyne Corporation. Its purpose is to act as an information resource to worldwide higher education focusing on immersive visualization platforms, advanced video screen formats, advanced visualization software and issues of sustainability and operation for high-tech visualization facilities. Founded in 2015, it currently has 150 members worldwide, represented by a wide variety of teaching and research-oriented higher education institutions, national labs, and colleges. 
More information on the <a href="https://thecaav.wordpress.com/">CAAV organization.</a> 
<a href="https://thecaav.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/the-caav-2017-program.pdf">The CAAV 2017 Conference Program</a>

THE CAAV 2017 Conference Featured Keynote on EVL’&rsquo;s Visualization and Collaboration Technologies

JULY 3, 2017 - Maxine Brown, director of the UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), participated in the Brazilian Symposium on Collaborative Systems (SBSC – Simposio Brasileiro de Sistemas Colaborativos), which was part of the Brazilian Computer Society general conference and held on the campus of Mackenzie Presbyterian University in Sao Paulo, Brazil. 
Brown was invited by long-time collaborator Jane de Almeida, co-chair of SBSC, director of Mackenzie&rsquo;s LabCine (Laboratorio de Artes Cinematicas e Visualizacao) and a long-time SAGE2 user. De Almeida felt that the audience, primarily academic and industrial researchers and graduate students, would find EVL&rsquo;s research in computer-supported collaborative work, particularly SAGE2, of interest. Brown gave the keynote &ldquo;Insight Through Images: Visualization and Collaboration Technologies for Exploring Big Data.&rdquo; She also participated in a panel discussion &ldquo;The next 10 years of collaborative systems,&rdquo; toured the LabCine, and gave a videotaped interview on her impressions of the conference and thoughts about the future. 
<a href="http://csbc2017.mackenzie.br/eventos/14-sbsc">The SBSC Agenda</a>

SAGE2 Keynote at Brazilian Symposium on Collaborative Systems

June 7-9, 2017 - Tommy Marrinan, EVL graduate and a postdoc at Argonne National Laboratory who has worked on SAGE2, attended the Pervasive Displays 2017 conference in Lugano, Switzerland and presented a paper on the SAGE2 StickySchedule application, for which he is a co-author. 
Vishal Doshi, Sneha Tuteja, Krishna Bharadwaj, Davide Tantillo, Thomas Marrinan, James Patton, G. Elisabeta Marai, &ldquo;StickySchedule: an interactive multi-user application for conference scheduling on large-scale shared displays,&rdquo; Proceedings of the 6th ACM International Symposium on Pervasive Displays (PerDis &rsquo;17), Lugano, Switzerland, June 7-9, 2017 
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3078810.3078817">http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3078810.3078817</a> 
Abstract: 
Scheduling conferences is a common task in both research and industry, which requires relatively small groups to collaborate and negotiate in order to solve an often-large logistical problem with many nuances. For large conferences, the process can take days and it is traditionally a manual procedure performed using physical tools such as whiteboards and sticky notes. We present the design and implementation of StickySchedule, a multi-user application for use on interactive large-scale shared displays to better enable groups to organize large conference-scheduling data. To evaluate our tool, we present observations from novice users, and authentic use cases with expert feedback from organizers who are heavily involved in large conference scheduling. The main contributions of our work are documenting the collaborative and competitive aspects of conference scheduling, creating a tool that incorporates successful features and addresses identified issues with prior works, and verifying the usefulness of our tool by observing and discussing a variety of use cases, in both collocated and remote-distributed settings.

Pervasive Displays 2017

The <a href="http://sage2.sagecommons.org/2017/11/27/sage2-sc17-demonstrations-birds-of-a-feather-and-scinet-participation/">SC17 SAGE2&trade; BOF presentation material</a> is now posted online. 
* * * * * * * * * * * 
SAGE2 @ SC17: Demonstrations, Birds of a Feather, and SCinet Participation 
NOVEMBER 12-16, 2017 - Members of the SAGE2&trade; Team who attended the IEEE/ACM SC17 conference - from University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa&rsquo;s Laboratory for Advanced Visualization &amp; Applications (LAVA), University of Illinois at Chicago&rsquo;s Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), and University of Hawaiz&rsquo;i at Hilo - were involved in many tech transfer activities, notably research demonstrations, a Birds of a Feather (BOF) meeting, and developing visual analytics of network performance for the SCinet DevOps team. The SC17 conference was held at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver. 
SAGE2 BOF 
The &ldquo;SAGE2 9th Annual International SC BOF: Scalable Amplified Group Environment for Global Collaboration&rdquo; meeting was held on Thursday, November 16. The BOF provided a Forum for SAGE2 developers to meet with the the SAGE/SAGE2 global user community and potential users; specifically: 
<ul><ul><ul>
<li>To introduce key SAGE2 team members
<li>To highlight new SAGE2 sites and applications
<li>To provide an overview of the 2017 SAGE2 user survey and recommended roadmap
<li>To introduce SAGE2 v3 (named &ldquo;Waipi&rsquo;o&rdquo;)
<li>To solicit feedback
</ul></ul></ul> 
SAGE2 presentation materials can be downloaded or accessed as follows: 
<ul><ul><ul>
<li>SAGE2 Presentation in Powerpoint with Embedded Movies (432MB) <a href="http://sage2.sagecommons.org/download/2332/">SAGE2 BOF2017 PPT</a></li>
<li>SAGE2 Presentation PDF (2MB) <a href="http://sage2.sagecommons.org/download/2329/">SAGE2 BOF2017 PDF</a></li>
</ul></ul></ul> 
SAGE2 Videos: 
<ul><ul><ul>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/embed/q6AdaeoFDm8">SAGE2 Cloud</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uU5HZtmvS10">SAGE2 Image Geolocation</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/embed/l2pRLhw6GSE">SAGE2 and JupyterLab</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6E7pdyuhwhA">SAGE2 Remote PointersZ</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9atA_h_t5pM">SAGE2 Speech Commands</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jglsZNQ8T-g">SAGE2 SageRDI: SAGE River Disaster Information</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ft11wOcUjvA">SAGE2 Synchronized Movie Playback</a></li>
</ul></ul></ul> 
SAGE2 Demonstrations 
SAGE2 demonstrations took place in the Center for Data Intensive Science/Open Commons Consortium research booth on the exhibition floor, November 13-16, 2017. Booth attendees saw firsthand SAGE2 v3&rsquo;s many new and advanced features, and talked with the key developers: 
<ul><ul><ul>
<li>SAGE2Cloud: create and manage SAGE2 server instances in Docker containers</li>
<li>JupyterLab plugin: link your science workflows with SAGE2 using the next version of Jupyter</li>
<li>Performance monitoring: monitor performance of your server and display clients</li>
<li>A user management system</li>
<li>Unity3D apps (WebGL export)</li>
<li>Remote collaboration features: remote view, remote pointers</li>
<li>Voice commands</li>
<li>Better webviews and user interface</li>
</ul></ul></ul> 
SAGE2 SCinet Participation 
SCinet is the SC conference&rsquo;s highly sophisticated, high-performance network infrastructure that is designed and implemented by a large group of academic, government and industry volunteers. SCinet&rsquo;s DevOps Team runs the internal software infrastructure for SCinet - including software to monitor and measure network flows to ensure services and provide alerts when there are issues. Starting last year, SCinet organizers used SAGE2 on a tiled display wall outside their Network Operations Center in order to provide attendees with large-scale images about the network. This year, SCinet continued to use SAGE2, but also wanted help producing visualizations of network flows to gain more insight into usage. Andrew Burks, a member of the SAGE2 Team from EVL, produced several visual analytic diagrams over the course of the week, which were displayed both on SCinet&rsquo;s wall as well as in the SAGE2 research booth. 
SAGE2 receives major funding from the National Science Foundation (award #ACI-1441963). 
SAGE and SAGE2 are trademarks of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees. 
For more information, see: <a href="http://www.sagecommons.org">www.sagecommons.org</a>

SAGE2 BOF2017 PPT

SC17 SAGE2 BOF Presentation

SC17 SAGE2 BOF materials now posted online

SAGE2 is a user-centered platform for small groups or large distributed teams to access digital media datasets from various sources and juxtapose, share and investigate content on tiled display walls. SAGE2 builds on SAGE (Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment), developed with prior NSF funding. With 90 SAGE2 sites worldwide since 2015, SAGE2 is having a transformative effect on data exploration, visualization and collaboration, making cyberinfrastructure more accessible to end users, both in the laboratory and in the classroom.

SAGE2 Scalable Amplified Group Environment (poster)

SAGE2 is a web-based, user-centered platform for small groups or distributed teams to access digital media datasets from various
sources and share and investigate content on display walls. SAGE2 builds on SAGE, previously funded by NSF. By making cyberinfrastructure more accessible to end systems and to end users, both in the lab and in the classroom, SAGE2 is transforming data visualization, data exploration and collaboration.

SI2-SSI: SAGE2 (Scalable Amplified Group Environment) (presentation)

The SAGE Development Team at the Laboratory for Advanced Visualization &amp; Applications (LAVA) at the University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa and the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago recently received one-year supplemental funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to their SAGE2 award, in the amount of $527,000, to focus on SAGE2 cybersecurity. The diversity and distributed nature of the SAGE2 user base provides a growing set of security concerns. Identity and access management procedures, in particular, provide unique challenges, given the variety of institutions using SAGE2 to collaborate using display walls. 
In July 2018, the SAGE2 Team began working with Trusted CI, the NSF Cybersecurity Center of Excellence at Indiana University, to develop an Engagement Plan that outlines the scope of a 6-month timeline for the engagement, followed by 6 months of implementation. Trusted CI is helping outline Identity and Access Management (IAM) procedures appropriate for SAGE2&rsquo;s distributed user base. For example, SAGE2 needs to identify and provide access to local and remote sites involved in a collaboration as well as the users at those sites; such as: who is allowed to collaborate, are they allowed to share information or simply read it, and are they allowed to download information, etc. A secondary goal of the engagement, time permitting, is to determine if there are any unidentified high-priority cybersecurity needs revealed during the fact-finding stage that the SAGE2 Team should pursue; such as: securing the web server, securing documents that are shared, etc. 
<a href="http://blog.trustedci.org/search?updated-max=2018-08-02T11:59:00-04:00&max-results=7">Trusted CI Blog</a>

The SAGE2 team at UIC/EVL remotely collaborated with the University of Chicago’s Research Computing Center during its fourth annual research computing symposium and exposition, Mind Bytes.

SAGE2 Team Engaging with the Trusted CI Center on SAGE2 Cybersecurity

The &ldquo;SAGE2 10th Annual International SC BOF: Scalable Amplified Group Environment for Global Collaboration&rdquo; Birds of a Feather (BOF) meeting will be held: 
<ul><li>Tuesday, November 13</li>
<li>12:15PM - 01:15PM</li> 
<li>Room: D163, Dallas Convention Center</li>
<li><a href="https://sc18.supercomputing.org/presentation/?id=bof137&sess=sess393">https://sc18.supercomputing.org/presentation/?id=bof137&sess=sess393</a></li> 
SAGE2 (Scalable Amplified Group Environment) is an open-source, web-based, user-centered platform for local and/or distributed small or large groups of researchers, educators and students to communicate information and ideas as if they were in the same room. Think of it as WebEx or Skype for cyber-enabled, data-intensive science, engineering and education. SAGE2, like its predecessor SAGE (Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment), is the defacto operating system for managing Big Data on tiled walls, providing the scientific community with persistent visualization and collaboration services for global cyberinfrastructure. This year&rsquo;s BoF will focus on eliciting community input on use cases and cybersecurity enhancements. 
To see SAGE2 demonstrations, visit us at the StarLight research booth on the exhibition floor from Tuesday-Thursday, Booth #2851. 
Together, we can advance scientific research and education by providing production-quality, community-driven, end-user open services for visualization and collaboration that utilize shared national and international cyberinfrastructure. 
See you at SC18! 
Jason Leigh 
University of Hawai&rsquo;i at Manoa 
leighj@hawaii.edu 
Maxine Brown and Luc Renambot 
Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) 
University of Illinois at Chicago 
maxine@uic.edu 
SAGE2 receives major funding from the National Science Foundation (award #ACI-1441963). 
SAGE and SAGE2 are trademarks of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees. 
<a href="http://www.sagecommons.org">More information.</a>

SAVE THE DATE: SAGE2 10th Annual International SC BOF @ SC18 - Tuesday, November 13, 12:15 - 1:15pm

NOVEMBER 1, 2018 -- Lance Long, Senior Research Programmer for the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), which is part of the Computer Science (CS) department at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), is a recipient of the 2018 UIC Award of Merit. This campus-wide honor annually recognizes Academic Professional and Civil Service employees who have demonstrated a commitment to excellence in all aspects of their work. 
Of the 30 awards being given this year, Long is one of two from the College of Engineering, representing the Computer Science department. Long started his career as a UIC Computer Science graduate student, who early on contributed to EVL&rsquo;s successes and is now a dedicated staff member that retains the collective laboratory memory of how things were developed, while helping make new advancements. 
The Merit Award recognizes Long&rsquo;s service to the laboratory, the Computer Science department, and the campus. He is currently responsible for facilitating and expediting the design, development, acquisition and integration of EVL&rsquo;s advanced visualization, computing and networking technologies. In addition, he assists with EVL tours and demonstrations for campus visitors and for student recruitment, supports interdisciplinary faculty and students who use EVL resources, and spends many hours assisting other campus units who want to replicate EVL&rsquo;s technologies. In addition, he contributes to Federal grants, co-authors research papers, helps set up and demo EVL'&rsquo;s technologies at major conferences, and visits and consults with academic, government and industrial partners who use and/or license EVL&rsquo;s technologies. 
It is an honor long overdue. Congratulations to Lance! 
UIC Award of Merit recipients will be honored during the <a href="https://emails.uofi.uic.edu/newsletter/190970.html">Employee Recognition Award Ceremony</a> on Tuesday, November 6, 2018, from 10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. at the UIC Isadore and Sadie Dorin Forum.

UIC CS/EVL Lance Long Receives UIC Award of Merit

MS, 2019

Mirko Mantovani

Large format displays&rsquo; popularity is constantly increasing in universities and workplaces due to their prices showing a constant decrease over time. Many studies have demonstrated their benefits on several kind of tasks, from navigation of 3D environments to complicated tasks that require high cognitive load, and these studies have demonstrated how they can increase productivity and the quality of work in multi-user collaborative environments. 
I am studying the general problem of using large format displays in a multi-user collaborative environments with the specific problem of university study course planning. The traditional approach is represented by a regular whiteboard that will be compared with a project planning/scheduling software developed for large format displays. 
The purpose of this study is not only to confirm previous studies&rsquo; results that claim that the usage of large format displays in a multi-user collaborative environment can increase productivity and work quality, but also to evaluate and understand how their usage influences users&rsquo; cooperation and collaboration while performing a complex collaborative task. We will study how the subjects actually interact, and how different is their interaction, both with tools and other subjects, compared to the traditional approach. 
I developed an application for project planning that runs on SAGE2, an open-source middleware offering the possibility to exploit a large format display of any resolution and size. It also allows multiple users to control it at the same time, connecting to it with a regular web browser interface and a laptop, working in a shared environment. 
I will show four simple techniques to implement a general project planning application for large displays and I will show four different possible realizations using the same techniques, with a detailed overview on the one created for the user study. 
An innovative approach to collect data from the user study will be shown and explained in detail. Such approach improves and automatize the qualitative data analysis that must be conducted in similar studies. It includes space tracking of participants and automatic coding. 
Results show that the developed application is not missing any critical feature and it could be a good substitute of the traditional approach. Data suggests that collaboration behaviors could be influenced by such technology, and some slight differences on collaboration were found, but not enough to constitute statistical evidence. In a similar way, no statistical evidence was found about improvements in performance over classic whiteboard technology.

The workflow of a general interaction.

Collaborative Project Planning Using Large Format Displays

Research Experience Undergraduate (REU)

Zhongyi Chen

The Continuum environment is a high-resolution computer-enhanced group collaboration workspace, consisting of large format 2D touch-enabled and 3D tiled displays, and instrumented with arrays of ambient sensors, enabling users to collaborate with local and remote colleagues and their data more effectively by giving the room itself the ability to anticipate their needs, improve their interaction, and focus their time on discovery rather than the technology. 
EVL&rsquo;s SAGE2 middleware enables teams of users to manage their data, documents, images and media on the Continuum display walls as if the room were one seamless canvas. SAGE2 lets users post and manipulate information, visualizations and animations across the Continuum displays. EVL REU Sean Walker developed a spatial audio system that ties audio playback from SAGE2 media content directly to the media&rsquo;s (i.e. video) location on the display wall. 
Additionally, any audio playback in the Continuum environment can be played back from any of the X number of speakers in the space. The spatial audio functionality was implemented using AVB (Audio Video Bridging) to connect all of the speakers positioned throughout the room coupled with SuperCollider (a functional programming language for audio) to pan the sound around the space.

Spatial Audio in the Continuum Environment

For those attending SC19 in Denver, Colorado, we will hold the &ldquo;SAGE2 11th Annual International SC BOF: Scalable Amplified Group Environment for Global Collaboration&rdquo; Birds of a Feather (BOF) meeting: 
Tuesday, November 19 
12:15PM - 01:15PM 
Room: 708, Colorado Convention Center 
<a href="https://sc19.supercomputing.org/presentation/?id=bof130&sess=sess279">https://sc19.supercomputing.org/presentation/?id=bof130&sess=sess279</a> 
SAGE2 (Scalable Amplified Group Environment) is the de facto operating system for managing Big Data on tiled display walls, providing the scientific community with persistent visualization and collaboration services for global cyberinfrastructure. SAGE2 is an open-source, web-based, user-centered platform for local or distributed groups of researchers, educators and students to communicate information and ideas as if they are in the same room. This year&rsquo;s BoF provides a forum to provide new and potential users with an overview of new features and enhancements, and to elicit community input on use cases and roadmaps. 
To see SAGE2 demonstrations, visit us at the StarLight research booth on the exhibition floor from Tuesday-Thursday, Booth #993. 
Together, we can advance scientific research and education by providing production-quality, community-driven, end-user open services for visualization and collaboration that utilize shared national and international cyberinfrastructure. 
See you at SC19! 
Jason Leigh 
Laboratory for Advanced Visualization & Applications (LAVA) 
University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa 
<a href="mailto:leighj@hawaii.edu">leighj@hawaii.edu</a> 
Maxine Brown and Luc Renambot 
Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) 
University of Illinois at Chicago 
<a href="mailto:maxine@uic.edu">maxine@uic.edu</a> 
SAGE2 receives major funding from the National Science Foundation (award #ACI-1441963). 
SAGE and SAGE2 are trademarks of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees. 
<a href="https://www.sagecommons.org">More information.</a>

SAGE2 11th Annual International SC BOF @ SC19 - Tuesday, November 19, 12:15 - 1:15pm

NOVEMBER 18-21, 2019 - Members of the SAGE2&trade; Team who attended the IEEE/ACM SC19 conference - from University of Hawai&rsquo;i at Manoa&rsquo;s Laboratory for Advanced Visualization & Applications (LAVA), University of Illinois at Chicago&rsquo;s Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), and University of Hawai&raquo;i at Hilo - were involved in many tech transfer activities, notably research demonstrations, a Birds of a Feather (BOF) meeting, and maintaining two SAGE2 walls managed by the SCinet DevOps team. The SC19 conference was held at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver, Colorado. 
SAGE2 BOF 
The &ldquo;SAGE2 11th Annual International SC BOF: Scalable Amplified Group Environment for Global Collaboration&rdquo; meeting was held on Tuesday, November 19, 2019. The BOF provided a Forum for SAGE2 developers to meet with the SAGE/SAGE2 global user community and potential users; specifically: 
- To introduce key SAGE2 team members 
- To highlight new SAGE2 sites and use cases - participating users were Jason Haga of AIST (Japan) and Paul Navrátil of TACC (USA) 
- To introduce SAGE2 v5 
- To provide a forum for discussion and feedback 
Download the SAGE2 presentation slides from the link at the bottom of this page. 
SAGE2 Demonstrations 
SAGE2 demonstrations took place in the StarLight research booth on the exhibition floor, November 18-21, 2019. Booth attendees saw firsthand SAGE2 v5&rsquo;s many new and advanced features, and talked with the key developers. 
In addition, SAGE2 partners from Japan&rsquo;s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) organized and hosted SAGE2 presentations in their research booth on the show floor, and also participated in collaborative demos between their booth and the StarLight booth. 
SAGE2 SCinet Participation 
SCinet is the SC conference&rsquo;s highly sophisticated, high-performance network infrastructure that is designed and implemented by a large group of academic, government and industry volunteers. SCinet&rsquo;s DevOps Team runs the internal software infrastructure for SCinet - including software to monitor and measure network flows to ensure services and provide alerts when there are issues. Starting in 2016, SCinet DevOps used SAGE2 on a tiled display wall outside their Network Operations Center in order to provide attendees with large-scale images about the network. This year, SCinet hosted two SAGE2 walls at the conference - SCinet Analytics and SC Theater. 
The SC Theater, with seating for 20 and standing room as well, was located next to SCinet on the exhibit floor. It showcased presentations by students and technologists from the HPC community, focusing on data-driven scientific applications. SCinet generated a heat map of the exhibit floor to discover where attendees were spending their time (accessing people&rsquo;s cell phone signals). Marc Lyonnais, SC19 SCinet Vice-Chair and Director of External Research at Ciena, commented that the heat map showed that the SC Theater equaled or outperformed large-scale industry booths with theater-style setups for vendor-specific presentations, depending on time of day! Note: The StarLight booth, where SAGE2 was demonstrated, was directly behind the SC Theater, so maybe those crowds were actually watching SAGE2 demos in the StarLight booth.

SC19 SAGE2 BOF Presentation Slides

SAGE2 Team Members at SC19

SAGE2 @ SC19: Demonstrations, Birds of a Feather, and SCinet Participation

SAGE (the Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment) and its successor SAGE2 (the Scalable Amplified Group Environment) are operating systems for managing content across wideband display environments. This paper documents the prevalent usage patterns of SAGE-enabled display walls in support of the e-Science enterprise, based on nearly 15 years of observations of the SAGE community. These patterns will help guide e-Science users and cyberinfrastructure developers on how best to leverage large tiled display walls, and the types of software services that could be provided in the future. 
Keywords: tiled display wall, immersive analytics, visualization, human-centered computing, computer-supported cooperative work

The e-Science Research, Development and Training Enterprise.

Usage Patterns of Wideband Display Environments In e-Science Research, Development and Training

SAGE2 is a user-centered platform for small groups or large distributed teams to access digital media datasets from various sources and juxtapose, share and investigate content on tiled display walls. SAGE2 builds on SAGE (Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment), developed with prior NSF funding. SAGE2 is having a transformative effect on data exploration, visualization and collaboration, making cyberinfrastructure more accessible to end-users, both in the laboratory and in the classroom.

SAGE2 Scalable Amplified Group Environment (poster 2020)

Maxine Brown (UIC PI), Andrew Johnson (UIC co-PI), Luc Renambot (UIC co-PI) 
Jason Leigh (University of Hawaii Manoa PI) Christopher North (Virginia Polytechnic PI) 
NSF Award Number: 2003800 
Award Period of Performance: 05/15/2020 - 04/30/2025 
Total Amount Obligated: $2,250,000 
UIC Computer Science Electronic Visualization Lab (EVL) Director Maxine Brown, PI, co-PIs UIC CS Professor Andy Johnson and UIC CS Research Associate Professor Luc Renambot, and Senior Personnel EVL Senior Research Programmer Lance Long are awarded a $2.25 million dollar National Science Foundation grant entitled &ldquo;Collaborative Research: CSSI Frameworks: SAGE3: Smart Amplified Group Environment for Harnessing the Data Revolution.&rdquo; The grant runs from May 2020 to April 2025. It&rsquo;s part of an overall $5 million project, that also includes a team from University of Hawaii Manoa led by Jason Leigh and a team from Virginia Polytechnic led by Christopher North. 
ABSTRACT 
The Big Data revolution necessitates the use of sophisticated tools such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Data Visualization to harness the sheer volume, velocity and variety of datasets that are becoming the norm. However, it is the research community that must make sense of the data being amassed, so cyberinfrastructure must extend to people. SAGE3 (Smart Amplified Group Environment) puts the &ldquo;human in the loop&rdquo; by providing scientists with an intuitive framework that integrates state-of-the-art AI technologies with applications, workflows, smart visualizations and collaboration services to help them access, share, explore and analyze their data, come to conclusions, and make decisions with greater speed, accuracy, comprehension and confidence. 
SAGE3 builds upon the NSF-funded first-generation SAGE (Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment) and second-generation SAGE2 (Scalable Amplified Group Environment), which are today&rsquo;s de facto operating systems to manage Big Data on tiled display walls. Its development focuses on two fundamental components: AI-enhanced &ldquo;smart&rdquo; services and advanced computing resource orchestration to support reproducible work models for secure collaborative work. SAGE3 amplifies user productivity, providing them with commercially available and open-source AI solutions, which autonomously and transparently analyze data while continually learning and improving through user interactions. SAGE3 makes AI technologies broadly accessible, not just a privilege for the technically savvy. SAGE3 further democratizes AI by using Data Visualization to help interpret and explain AI models so users better understand how AI came to its decisions, which engenders user trust and can help identify potentially prejudiced or biased models. 
SAGE3 augments every step of the scientific discovery enterprise - from quickly summarizing large data, to finding trends and similarities or anomalies among one or more linked datasets, to communicating findings to scientists, public policy and government officials, and the general public, to educating the next-generation workforce. Ultimately, it is the scientists and future scientists who must Harness the Big Data revolution to solve the nation&rsquo;s grand challenge problems that will benefit society as a whole - from studying the diversity of life on Earth, to understanding the Earth and its systems from satellite imagery of its poles, to developing response scenarios for natural disasters such as landslides and pandemics that impact the citizens and economies of the world.

UIC Computer Science/EVL awarded $2.25 Million from NSF for SAGE3

UIC PI: Andrew Johnson, co-PI: Luc Renambot 
University of Hawaii Manoa PI: Jason Leigh 
Virginia Polytechnic PI: Chirstopher North 
NSF Award Number: 2003800 
Award Period of Performance: 05/15/2020 - 04/30/2025 
Total Amount Obligated: $2,250,000 
The Big Data revolution necessitates the use of sophisticated tools such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Data Visualization to harness the sheer volume, velocity and variety of datasets that are becoming the norm. However, it is the research community that must make sense of the data being amassed, so cyberinfrastructure must extend to people. SAGE3 (Smart Amplified Group Environment) puts the &ldquo;human in the loop&rdquo; by providing scientists with an intuitive framework that integrates state-of-the-art AI technologies with applications, workflows, smart visualizations and collaboration services to help them access, share, explore and analyze their data, come to conclusions, and make decisions with greater speed, accuracy, comprehension and confidence. 
SAGE3 builds upon the NSF-funded first-generation SAGE (Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment) and second-generation SAGE2 (Scalable Amplified Group Environment), which are today&rsquo;s de facto operating systems to manage Big Data on tiled display walls. Its development focuses on two fundamental components: AI-enhanced &ldquo;smart&rdquo; services and advanced computing resource orchestration to support reproducible work models for secure collaborative work. SAGE3 amplifies user productivity, providing them with commercially available and open-source AI solutions, which autonomously and transparently analyze data while continually learning and improving through user interactions. SAGE3 makes AI technologies broadly accessible, not just a privilege for the technically savvy. SAGE3 further democratizes AI by using Data Visualization to help interpret and explain AI models so users better understand how AI came to its decisions, which engenders user trust and can help identify potentially prejudiced or biased models. 
SAGE3 augments every step of the scientific discovery enterprise - from quickly summarizing large data, to finding trends and similarities or anomalies among one or more linked datasets, to communicating findings to scientists, public policy and government officials, and the general public, to educating the next-generation workforce. Ultimately, it is the scientists and future scientists who must Harness the Big Data revolution to solve the nation&rsquo;s grand challenge problems that will benefit society as a whole - from studying the diversity of life on Earth, to understanding the Earth and its systems from satellite imagery of its poles, to developing response scenarios for natural disasters such as landslides and pandemics that impact the citizens and economies of the world. 
<a href="https://youtu.be/39x-cOQJRVc">View a video of SAGE3 being demonstrated</a> on EVL&rsquo;s YouTube channel.

SAGE3: Smart Amplified Group Environment for Harnessing the Data Revolution

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

An example of SAGE2 at work, using cloud-based and web-browser technologies in order to enhance data intensive co-located and remote collaboration.

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

The VisSnippets system is designed to facilitate effective collaborative data exploration. VisSnippets leverages SAGE2 middleware that enables users to manage the display of digital media content on large displays, thereby providing collaborators with a high-resolution common workspace. Based in JavaScript, VisSnippets provides users with the flexibility to implement and/or select visualization packages and to quickly access data in the cloud. By simplifying the development process, VisSnippets removes the need to scaffold and integrate interactive visualization applications by hand. Users write reusable blocks of code called &ldquo;snippets&rdquo; for data retrieval, transformation, and visualization. By composing dataflows from the group&rsquo;s collective snippet pool, users can quickly execute and explore complementary or contrasting analyses. By giving users the ability to explore alternative scenarios, VisSnippets facilitates parallel work for collaborative data exploration leveraging large-scale displays. We describe the system, its design and implementation, and showcase its flexibility through two example applications. 
CCS Concepts: Human-centered computing, Visualization systems and tools; Collaborative and social computing systems and tools. 
Keywords: information visualization, visual data science, collaborative visual analytics

An interactive transportation dashboard for SF Muni bus data.

VisSnippets: A Web-Based System for Impromptu Collaborative Data Exploration on Large Displays

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

iU of Japan announces partnership with 7 international universities

Research Experience Undergraduate

Eseroghene Omene

We developed a collaborative virtual environment for architectural planning that facilitates groups of people to work together using three different interfaces. These interfaces enable users to interact with the scene with varying levels of immersion and different interaction modalities. We conducted a user study to gauge the general usability of the system and to understand how the different interfaces affect the group work. In this paper we present the architecture of the system along with its different interfaces. We also present the user study results and the insights we gained from the study. 
Keywords: group work, collaborative environments

Two users interact with the 3D interface

A Hybrid Collaborative Virtual Environment with Heterogeneous Representations for Architectural Planning

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

Andrew Johnson Named Interim Director, EVL

Since receiving an <a href="http://sage3.sagecommons.org/">NSF award for SAGE3</a>, the Smart Amplified Group Environment, in May 2020, the SAGE3 Team has been hard at work designing and developing SAGE3. An alpha version of the SAGE3 remote collaboration platform is being developed, and the Team will give a Zoom-based SAGE3 presentation and demonstration as part of the CineGrid organization&rsquo;s Summer Community Forum series. All are welcome to attend! 
Jason Leigh and Luc Renambot will be presenting next-generation SAGE3 along with the rest of the Team. Jason and Luc are CineGrid founding members and SAGE/SAGE2/SAGE3 inventors and architects. The CineGrid organization previously focused on the use of advanced networks for digital media processing, analysis, transformation and preservation, but more recently it is focusing on Artificial Intelligence (AI) research and its relevance to digital media. 
SAGE3 is being designed to integrate AI technologies with applications, visualization workflows and collaboration services. SAGE3 takes advantage of major technological and sociological changes that have occurred since SAGE2 was introduced in 2013. Notably, web browsers and languages are maturing; scientific communities are relying on notebooks; science workloads incorporate AI programs and programmable infrastructure; and, given the pandemic, the workplace is changing to hybrid office/home environments that require not just video-teleconferencing but data-driven tools for largely distributed groups. 
All are welcome to attend the CineGrid Community Forum. There will be two SAGE3 sessions to accommodate international audiences; both sessions will present the same content, though the audience and questions may vary. 
* Tuesday, June 22 at 4:30pm - 6:00pm PDT 
* Wednesday, June 23 at 10am - 11:30am PDT 
Registration is required for each session, but there is no cost. To register, <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cinegrid-community-forum-june-tickets-156005222821">click here</a>. 
This event has been recorded and available on the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyE09TxwhPE">CineGrid Community Forum archive website</a>. 
SAGE3 is being developed by the Laboratory for Advanced Visualization and Applications (LAVA) and the Hawaii Data Science Institute (HI-DSI) at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UHM), the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), and the Sanghani Center for AI and Data Analytics (Sanghani) at Virginia Tech (VT). SAGE3 receives major funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation, awards #2004014 (UHM), #2003800 (UIC) and #2003387 (VT). SAGE, SAGE2 and SAGE3 are trademarks of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees.

Jason Leigh, UHM, is the primary principal investigator and inventor of SAGE/SAGE2/SAGE3.

Introducing SAGE3 - Zoom event hosted by the CineGrid Community Forum

The popularity of large-scale, high-resolution display walls, as visualization endpoints in eScience infrastructure, is rapidly growing. These displays can be connected to distributed computing resources over high-speed network, providing effective means for researchers to visualize, interact with, and understand large volumes of datasets. Typically large display walls are built by tiling multiple physical displays together and running a tiled display wall required a cluster of computers. With the advent of advanced graphics hardware, a single computer can now drive over a dozen displays, thereby greatly reducing the cost of ownership and maintenance of a tiled display wall system. This in turn enables a broader user base to take advantage of such technologies. Since tiled display walls are also well suited to collaborative work, users tend to launch and operate multiple applications simultaneously. To ensure that applications maintain a high degree of responsiveness to the users even under heavy use loads, the display wall must now ensure that the limited system resources are prioritized to maximize interactivity rather than thread-level fair sharing or overall job-completion throughput. In this paper, we present a new resource scheduling scheme that is specifically designed to prioritize responsiveness in collaborative large display wall environments where multiple users can interact with multiple applications simultaneously. We evaluate our scheduling scheme with a user study involving groups of users interacting simultaneously on a tiled display wall with multiple applications. Results show that our scheduling framework provided a higher frame rate for applications, which led to a significantly higher user performance (approx. 25%) in a target acquisition test when compared against the traditional operating system scheduling scheme. 
Keywords: Scheduling, Human factors, Algorithms, Interactive systems, Distributed graphics

A single machine-driven tiled-display wall running SAGE at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory in the University of Illinois at Chicago. The 20′ by 6′ display wall is made up of 18 LCD panels with a total resolution approximately 17 megapixels.

Multiuser-Centered Resource Scheduling for Collaborative Display Wall Environments

PRAGMA is hosting a Zoom-based SAGE3 presentation and live demonstration by SAGE3 Principal Investigator (PI) Jason Leigh and co-PI Luc Renambot as well as other SAGE3 Team members. In addition, SAGE2 users Prapaporn (Nan) Rattanatamrong of Thammasat University in Thailand and Jason Haga of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in Japan start the presentation with several ongoing SAGE2 use cases. 
This presentation is part of the 2021 Re-Connect Webinar series organized by the PRAGMA (Pacific Rim Application and Grid Middleware Assembly) organization. Many PRAGMA members are long-time SAGE users. 
Since receiving an NSF award for SAGE3, the Smart Amplified Group Environment, in May 2020, the SAGE3 Team has been hard at work designing and developing SAGE3. An alpha version of the SAGE3 remote collaboration platform is being presented. 
SAGE3 is being designed to integrate AI technologies with applications, visualization workflows and collaboration services. SAGE3 takes advantage of major technological and sociological changes that have occurred since SAGE2 was introduced in 2013. Notably, web browsers and languages are maturing; scientific communities are relying on notebooks; science workloads incorporate AI programs and programmable infrastructure; and, given the pandemic, the workplace is changing to hybrid office/home environments that require not just video-teleconferencing but data-driven tools for largely distributed groups. 
All are welcome to attend! No pre-registration is required. 
Asia: Aug 27 (Friday), 8am(WIB/ICT) / 9am(MYT/TST/PST) / 10am(JST/KST) 
US: Aug 26 (Thursday), 6pm(PDT) / 8pm(CDT) / 9pm(EDT) / 3pm(HST) 
Zoom: 
<a HREF="https://hawaii.zoom.us/j/96474855666?pwd=UTBNYU4wQkJnc1c2cGwxdkxCTFBCZz09
">https://hawaii.zoom.us/j/96474855666?pwd=UTBNYU4wQkJnc1c2cGwxdkxCTFBCZz09</a> 
Meeting ID: 964 7485 5666 
Passcode: sage3 
The SAGE3 presentation and demonstration were first done for the CineGrid organization in June 2021. However, if you were unable to see it then, we urge you to tune into the PRAGMA webinar and then ask questions of SAGE3 Team members. This presentation will be recorded and available at a later date. 
SAGE3 is being developed by the Laboratory for Advanced Visualization and Applications (LAVA) and the Hawaii Data Science Institute (HI-DSI) at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UHM), the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), and the Sanghani Center for AI and Data Analytics (Sanghani) at Virginia Tech (VT). SAGE3 receives major funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation, awards #2004014 (UHM), #2003800 (UIC) and #2003387 (VT). SAGE, SAGE2 and SAGE3 are trademarks of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees.

Introducing SAGE3 - Zoom event hosted by PRAGMA

For those unable to attend the SAGE3 presentations and live demonstrations by SAGE3 Principal Investigator (PI) Jason Leigh and co-PI Luc Renambot as well as other SAGE3 Team members to PRAGMA and CineGrid earlier this summer, the sessions are now available via YouTube. 
<a href="https://youtu.be/UprsquVI6yo">Access the PRAGMA recording.</a> 
The same SAGE3 virtual presentation and demonstration was done for the CineGrid community; however, the Questions & Answers following the demo were very different. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyE09TxwhPE">Access the CineGrid recording.</a> 
SAGE3 is being developed by the Laboratory for Advanced Visualization and Applications (LAVA) and the Hawaii Data Science Institute (HI-DSI) at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UHM), the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), and the Sanghani Center for AI and Data Analytics (Sanghani) at Virginia Tech (VT). SAGE3 receives major funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), awards #2004014 (UHM), #2003800 (UIC) and #2003387 (VT). 
SAGE, SAGE2 and SAGE3 are trademarks of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees.

SAGE3 Principal Investigator (PI) Jason Leigh, co-PI Luc Renambot and other SAGE3 Team members introduce and demo SAGE3 to the PRAGMA community as part of its 2021 Re-Connect Webinar series.

SAGE3 Introduction & Demo to PRAGMA and CineGrid - RECORDINGS AVAILABLE

Construction activities for the new $117.8 million, 135,000-square-foot Computer Design Research and Learning Center to be located at 900 W. Taylor St. is underway. The CDRLC will support the Department of Computer Science&rsquo;s growing student enrollment with 16,000 square feet of classroom space for collaborative teaching and learning environments, as well as 35 labs for faculty research activities in the computer science and engineering disciplines. 
The CDRLC will be the new home for the Electronic Visualization Laboratory featuring the latest technological and computing innovations to support research in advanced visualization, networking and collaborative environments. 
Read more about the CDRLC groundbreaking in the <a href="https://today.uic.edu/uic-breaks-ground-on-new-computer-design-research-and-learning-center">July 15th issue of UIC Today.</a> 
See a live webcam of the building&rsquo;s progress via the <a href="https://webcampub.multivista.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=aPublicWebcam.embed&WebcamPublicEmbedUID=5D4DCF05-AB2B-4770-A090-D79BE467F958">Multivista Construction Documentation webcam.</a>

New Computer Design Research and Learning Center Breaks Ground

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

Exciting SAGE3 announcements planned for early December

SAGE2 (Scalable Amplified Group Environment) is the de-facto platform to support group work on wide-band display environments. Unlike most web applications, the SAGE environment, due to the nature of its collaborative model, needs a nuanced handling of security aspects. This paper details the security requirements of SAGE2, the Identity and Access Control model that was developed to address those requirements, and the details of the Identity and Access Management system that the SAGE team implemented based on this new model. Further, we present a comparison of this new system with some of the popular collaboration platforms to highlight the uniqueness of SAGE2 integrated with this new Identity and Access Management system. 
Keywords: security, access control, collaborative environment, wide-band displays

Examples of SAGE2 wide-band displays

Securing Collaborative Work in Wide-band Display Environments

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

Screen shot of SAGE3 session.

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

EVL Affiliated Faculty Assistant Professor, CS

Nikita Nandish Soni

Data exploration stands to benefit from environments that permit users to examine and juxtapose many views of data, particularly views that present diverse selections of data values and attributes. Large, high-resolution environments are capable of showing many related views of data, but efficiently creating and displaying visualizations in these environments presents significant challenges. In this dissertation, I will present my research on &ldquo;multi-view data exploration interactions&rdquo; that enable users to create sets of views with coherent data value and attribute variations, through multi-modal speech and mid-air pointing gestures in large display
environments. This work enables users to rapidly and efficiently generate sets of views in support of multi-view data exploration tasks, organize these views in coherent collections, and operate on sets of views collectively, rather than individually, to efficiently reach large portions of the &lsquo;data and attribute space&rsquo;. I will present three contributions: 1) an observational study of data exploration in a large display environment with speech and mid-air gestures, 2) &lsquo;Traverse&rsquo;, an interaction technique for data exploration, based on this study, which uses natural language to create and pivot sets of views, and 3) &lsquo;Ditto&rsquo;, a multi-modal speech and mid-air pointing gesture interactive environment, which utilizes the multi-view data exploration technique, in
large display environments.

Study setting with the remote mediator in an adjacent room generating views using Tableau and dropping them to the user&rsquo;s display environment using SAGE2.

Interaction with Multiple Data Visualizations Through Natural Language Commands

Long-time EVLer and PhD candidate Arthur Nishimoto has been recognized by the UIC College of Engineering with the 2022 Exceptional Research Promise Award.  Arthur began his work with EVL in 2009 as a Research Experience Undergraduate developing virtual reality and visualization applications for collaborative research between EVL and NASA.  After graduating with his bachelorette degree, Arthur pursued a MS in computer science with focus on advanced visualization, virtual reality and real-time interactive application development.  Since 2014, Arthur has been working towards his PhD (expected Summer 2022), has been an incredibly prolific and valued member of EVL.  Arthur is well-deserving of this honor.  We look forward to seeing him continue his exceptional research over his career.

EVL PhD Candidate Arthur Nishimoto Recognized with the COE Exceptional Research Promise Award

EVL is a technology Innovator, building industry and cross-institutional connections and partnerships. In 2022, EVL deployed two GPU FIONAs in partnership with the Pacific Research Platform (PRP) and the University of California San Diego. The PRP is a partnership of more than 50 institutions that establishes a science-driven high-capacity data-centric &lsquo;freeway system&rsquo;. PRP has support from the National Science Foundation, and includes the US Department of Energy&rsquo;s Energy Science Network (ESnet), as well as scores of research universities in the nation and around the world. PRP leverages Nautilus, a HyperCluster for running containerized Big Data Applications using Kubernetes, and FIONA, flash input/output network applications. A GPU FIONA is a rack-mounted PCs designed by the PRP team that is optimized for 100Gbps large data storage with Mellanox ConnectX-6 SmartNICs, a 24 core Epic Rome CPU, 256GB of memory and 8 NVIDIA RTX-3090 GPUs. Nautilus provides over 7500 CPU cores, over 500 GPUs and 4 PBs of storage. The addition of two Nautilus GPU FIONAs at EVL builds upon our 2018 DTN (Data Transfer Node) that has provided over 300GB of Ceph Storage to Nautilus and our CAVE2 GPU Nodes that are contributing 5 NVIDIA GPUS. EVL provides Nautilus with 300GB of Ceph Storage, 128 CPU cores, and 21 NVIDIA GPUs. The platform is utilized for a wide variety of applications, including applying advanced astronomy AI to microscopy workflow, simulations for natural disasters, climate modeling, virtual reality and even accelerating NSF&rsquo;s IceCube Photon Propagation. UIC is enabled to participate in these cross-institutional connections using UIC&rsquo;s HPRNet, a network environment tailored to the needs of high-performance science applications, built on a Science DMZ architecture. 
<a href="https://pacificresearchplatform.org/media/">Read more about PRP.</a> 
<a href="https://pacificresearchplatform.org/media/sc21-larry-smarr-on-the-rise-of-supernetwork-data-intensive-computing/">See media coverage from SC21 on PRP and Nautilus.</a>

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