Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) researchers are awarded a supplemental subaward from the University of Hawaii to contribute to the research on &ldquo;SI2-SSI: SAGEnext: Next Generation Integrated Persistent Visualization and Collaboration Services for Global Cyberinfrastructure&rdquo;. The UIC lead on this project is Maxine Brown, director of EVL. Other UIC participants include Computer Science Research Associate Professor Luc Renambot, Senior Research Programmer Lance Long, and Associate Professor Andy Johnson, Research Director of the EVL. 
This new funding is part of a $527,000 supplement to the overall SAGE2 software project, with PI Jason Leigh at University of Hawaii. The supplement brings the overall project funding to roughly $5.5 million, with roughly 20% at the University of Hawaii and 80% at UIC. 
The overall project is for the SAGE2 software that allows groups to collaborate on large, multi-screen devices such as EVL&rsquo;s CAVE2&trade;. This new supplement is for the research team to consider the cybersecurity of SAGE2, in this era when cybersecurity is of such paramount importance. 
NSF Award ID: OAC-1441963 
Project Period: 10/1/18-9/30/19 
Award Amount: $386,000

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.

&ldquo;SI2-SSI: SAGEnext: Next Generation Integrated Persistent Visualization and Collaboration Services for Global Cyberinfrastructure&rdquo; Awarded

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>

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

MS, 2019

Mirko Mantovani

Research Experience Undergraduate (REU)

Zhongyi Chen

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

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: Maxine Brown, co-PIs: Andrew Johnson, 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.

SAGE3: Smart Amplified Group Environment for Harnessing the Data Revolution

PhD Graduate Student

Mir Masood Ali

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

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.

Cybersecurity

Bibliography

Related Topics

people (4)

events (7)

research (2)

Contact