EVL and Computer Science Professor G. Elisabeta Marai and Assistant Professor Sidhath Kumar participated in the 3rd AI Ecosystem Symposium held February 28, 2025, at UIC. The Symposium featured presentations on AI in Healthcare, Diagnostics, Informatics, and Wellness 
Dr. Marai&rsquo;s presentation focused on Bridging Human-Centered Data Science with Real World Problems. Dr. Kumar&rsquo;s presentation was &ldquo;﻿﻿Data to Decisions: A Topological Lens on High-Dimensional Biomedical Data.&rdquo; 
The Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, the College of Engineering, and the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory sponsored the event.

EVL Faculty Present Research at the UIC Ecosystem Symposium 3

EVL co-director and professor emeritus Dan Sandin is named keynote speaker at Stereoscopic Displays and Applications (SD&A) 2025 XXXVI. SD&A will be held February 3-6, 2025 at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport Hotel, Burlingame, CA held during the IS&T Electronic Imaging Symposium. 
Over the past fifty years, Dan has been a keen proponent of a wide range of stereoscopic developments. His presentation will reflect on how these technologies have shaped interdisciplinary collaboration and the evolution of electronic art and visualization techniques. Dan is director emeritus of the Electronic Visualization Lab (EVL) and a professor emeritus in the School of Art and Design at UIC. 
His presentation is scheduled for 9:30 am on Tuesday, February 4, 2025. 
See more details about SD&A 2025 on the <a href="http://www.stereoscopic.org/2025/">advance program web page</a>. 
Abstract: 
The Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), established in 1973 at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), specialized in interactive electronic displays
even before the advent of the frame buffer. By ingeniously combining digital and analog systems, EVL enabled real-time interactive computer graphics through the Graphics Symbiosis System (GRASS). This system was instrumental for animator Larry Cuba in creating the computer graphics for the original 1977 &ldquo;Star Wars&rdquo; film, which was done frame by frame on 35mm film), as well as contributing to lesser-known movies like &ldquo;UFO: Target Earth&rdquo; for which the special effects were captured on video. SpiralPTL is a work preserved in the Museum of Modern Art&rsquo;s video art collection. Throughout the decades, EVL advanced the technology of computer graphics but also deeply integrated art, science, and education researchers and teaching faculty. This collaboration led to the creation of an interdisciplinary MFA program in Electronic Visualization, bridging UIC&rsquo;s Engineering College with its School of Art and Design. EVL&rsquo;s later innovations include the development of numerous interactive stereoscopic and autostereoscopic systems, most notably the Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE). This paper will describe and analyze these technological advancements, discussing both their successes and their challenges in adoption by scientists, engineers, and artists. The narrative will reflect on how these technologies have shaped interdisciplinary collaboration and the evolution of electronic art and visualization techniques over the past fifty years. 
Biography: 
Daniel J. Sandin is director emeritus of the Electronic Visualization Lab (EVL) and a professor emeritus in the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). As an artist, he has exhibited worldwide, and has received grants in support of his work from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His video animation &ldquo;Spiral PTL&rdquo; is in the inaugural collection of video art at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 2007 Sandin received the IEEE VGTC Virtual Reality Technical Achievement Award. He went on to develop a series of VR display systems including Varrier, a stereo VR display that does not require 3D glasses, and CAVE2, a large (20-foot) cylindrical display based on LCDs.

EVL&rsquo;s Daniel J. Sandin Named Keynote Speaker at ﻿SD&A

The SAGE3 development team hosts a one-hour Zoom event to introduce the SAGE3 AI-enhanced collaboration platform developed jointly by the University of Hawaii, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Virginia Tech January 21-23, 2025. 
Funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), SAGE3 is available to a wide range of scientific research & education communities at no charge. SAGE3 enables researchers and educators to seamlessly work together with data and visualizations, across devices - from laptops to large display walls. ﻿﻿Unleash spaces to think, collaborate, analyze, and make decisions with greater speed and confidence. See <a href="https://go.hawaii.edu/a5o">meeting details and registration information</a>. 
To learn more, please register for one of the upcoming 1-hour informational sessions. We will introduce newcomers to SAGE3 and update long-time users about its latest improvements.

SAGE3 AI-Enhanced Collaboration Platform Introduced

EVL alumni Sai Priya Jyothula and Arthur Nishimoto presented their Virtual Reality (VR) research at the 17th International Symposium on Visual Information Communication and Interaction (VINCI'24) held December 11-13, 2024, in Hsinchu, Taiwan. The VR project &ldquo;Hummingbird: Collaborative Virtual Reality for Tele-Immersive Interactive Theater&rdquo; was developed by Daria Tsoupikova, Sai Priya Jyothula, Arthur Nishimoto, Jo Cattell, Andrew Johnson and Lance Long. Their publication documenting the &rsquo;adventure&rsquo; over the years of developing, demonstrating, and engaging audiences in an innovative theater experience is recognized as the &ldquo;Best Art Paper&rdquo; of the Conference. 
VINCI is the premier international forum for researchers and industrial practitioners to discuss the state of the art in visual communication theories, designs, and applications. Visual communication through graphical or sign languages has long been conducted among humans of different backgrounds or cultures and, in recent decades, between humans and machines. In today's digital world, visual information is typically encoded with various metaphors commonly used in daily life to facilitate rapid comprehension and easy analysis during the communication process. Visual information communication generally encompasses information visualization, graphical user interfaces, visual analytics, and visual languages. Visual information is increasingly used to facilitate human-human communication through the Internet and mobile devices.

EVLers Present &ldquo;Hummingbird: Live Theater Adventure Empowering Collaboration in Virtual Reality&rdquo; & Win Best Art Paper Award at VINCI 2024

Candidate: Andrew Wentzel 
Committee: 
G.Elisabeta Marai (Chair), UIC 
Fabio Miranda, UIC 
Xinha Zhang, UIC 
Guadalupe Canahuate, University of Iowa 
Renata Raidou, TU Wien 
Date and Time: December 2nd, 10 AM CST 
Location: UIC ERF Room 2068 (Continuum) 
Zoom Details: 
<a href="https://uic.zoom.us/j/85300679588?pwd=UrRxqhWr6hcHbIrvGX1IMPaFPUVl3R.1">https://uic.zoom.us/j/85300679588?pwd=UrRxqhWr6hcHbIrvGX1IMPaFPUVl3R.1</a> 
Meeting ID: 853 0067 9588 
Passcode: fB6NnHyx 
Abstract: 
Research in visual computing (VC) focuses on integrating visual representations of datasets with computing systems, thus leveraging the complementary abilities of humans and machines. The resulting VC systems may include machine learning (ML) techniques, which have remarkable abilities in terms of processing vast amounts of data. However, creating VC+ML systems that can operate on spatio-temporal data is a largely unexplored, difficult topic. Challenges in this area include: capturing domain characterizations for spatial VC+ML problems, in particular when serving both ML model builders and ML model clients; creating explainable VC+ML models that can operate on spatial data, including measures that can capture spatial structure similarity; designing visual encodings for ML models that use spatial information and that enhance the modeler and client understanding of the model; and measuring the effect of deploying such VC+ML systems in practice. 
Based on several multi-year collaborations, I document several instances where spatial and explainable VC+ML solutions are required, and what role spatiality plays in these instances. Throughout this process, I extract and describe design requirements for explainable spatial VC+ML systems, and I identify necessary VC advances, including spatially-aware similarity measures and spatial visual explainability. I construct spatially-aware similarity measures to support ML problems in precision oncology, patient risk stratification in data mining, explainable interactive regression modeling for hypothesis testing in social science, and digital twin interfaces for cancer treatment planning. I introduce novel encodings for 3-dimensional and geospatial data and explore how to integrate such encodings with ML model explanations. I implement and evaluate several VC+ML systems and several resulting models that are explicitly designed to integrate domain-specific structural spatial information and unsupervised ML. Throughout this process, I also articulate design lessons related to model actionability.

PhD Dissertation Announcement: &ldquo;Human-Centered Design For Explainable, Spatial Machine Learning&rdquo;

Candidate: Pantea Habibi 
Date and Time: Friday, November 1, 2024; 3:30 PM - 6:00 PM 
Location: ERF 2068 
Abstract: 
When interacting with large displays, virtual reality, or augmented reality, people often use mid-air gestures. During these touchless interactions, they may need to alternate between hands or use both hands simultaneously. Most individuals have a hand preference, and preferred and non-preferred hands in lateralized individuals perform differently due to cerebral hemispheric specialization. For example, in right-handed individuals, the right hand is typically better at sequential motor tasks - those requiring (sensory) feedback control - whereas the left hand is better at parallel processing or open-loop behavior. In this thesis, we examine how lateral asymmetry impacts user performance in touchless input. My research provides an empirical investigation to characterize touchless performance when using preferred, non-preferred, and both hands. It explores binding the related tasks sequentially and in parallel, as well as different phrase structures, considering how much muscular tension is involved. 
In this work, we compared preferred and non-preferred hand performance in simple and compound tasks, such as pointing and select-and-dragging, respectively. In right-handed individuals, we did not find any significant performance differences between their preferred and non-preferred hands in touchless pointing or dragging. However, between-hand performance differences were significant when using mouse and stylus input. 
Additionally, we studied how phrasing with both hands can support volumetric multi-selection in touchless input. We present an empirical comparison of mid-air multi-selection techniques spanning dominant and non-dominant hand actions. The symmetric-synchronous and high-tension asymmetric-asynchronous bimanual techniques were not significantly different in terms of efficiency, and accuracy for within-reach targets. Furthermore, there were no significant differences between low and high-tension asymmetric-asynchronous bimanual techniques. The symmetric-synchronous bimanual technique was most preferred by users. 
Lastly, we explored how different phrase structures in bimanual phrasing impact compound task performance, such as touchless multi-selection and manipulation (e.g., drag-and-drop). Our findings revealed that while accuracy remained consistent across different tension levels, higher tension led to faster completion times through continuous gesture engagement. Interestingly, participants preferred half-tension phrasing for its ergonomic balance, as it minimized fatigue without compromising efficiency. These empirical findings can inform the design of future bimanual and multimodal interaction techniques involving touchless input.

PhD Dissertation Announcement: &ldquo;Understanding Lateral Asymmetry in Touchless Interaction&rdquo;

EVL faculty and UIC Design Professor Daria Tsoupikova is featured in the Fall 2024 College Engineering RISE magazine issue. The article covers Daria&rsquo; collaboration with the Chicago Design Archive and Columbia College Chicago.   The project entitled &ldquo;Chicago Design Milestones 1920-2019&rdquo; focuses on design milestones in the city of Chicago from 1920-2019.  The media design installation features 3,200 examples of design work done in the city, and premiered on the 150 Media Stream screens in the lobby of 150 North Riverside Plaza on the Chicago River July 1, 2019.

Daria Tsoupikova Featured in Fall 2024 RISE

Assistant professor Hy Kim, director of UIC&rsquo;s Human-Centered Engineering Lab will present his research: 
Friday 10/25/24, 1pm 
EVL Continuum (Room 2068 Engineering Research Facility) 
Abstract: 
Augmented reality (AR) has the potential to fundamentally change the way we interact with information. Direct perception of computer-generated graphics atop physical reality can afford hands-free access to contextual information on the fly. However, as users must interact with not only information on the display but also environmental changes in the real world, the traditional User-Centered Design (UCD) approaches that focus on human-computer interaction, may not always adequately address the dynamic nature of human-environment interaction. This seminar will introduce, Ecological Interface Design (EID), a new approach to the design and evaluation of AR interfaces to complement UCD. EID is a framework for interface design that respects dynamic, environmental constraints imposed on users&rsquo; behavior. EID addresses two questions for interface design; what information should be displayed (the content and structure of information that represent the physical reality of the work environment), and how that information should be presented (the perceptual forms of interface elements compatible with human information processing). The talk will start with the theoretical background of EID and show how this approach can benefit AR user interface design and evaluation with an example of an AR head-up display for vehicle drivers. 
Bio 
Hy Kim is an Assistant Professor of Industrial Engineering at the University of Illinois Chicago, where he is leading the <a href="https://sites.google.com/view/human-centered-engineering">Human-Centered Engineering lab</a>. His current research focuses on new methods for the requirements analysis, design, prototyping, and evaluation of extended reality (XR) applications, emphasizing human-technology partnerships at future workplaces. Sponsored by government agencies and industry partners, he has investigated basic topics on human factors in XR, such as human depth perception, visual attention, situation awareness, workload, and task performance while interacting with XR applications. Recently, his team has developed virtual environments to study how people would interact with future urban transportation services such as external human-machine interfaces for robotaxis & urban street robots (Honda), driver interfaces for SAE L3 automated vehicles (GM), and crew stations for remote operations of search & rescue vehicles (US Army). 
Dr. Kim received a Ph.D. in industrial and systems engineering specializing in human factors and ergonomics from Virginia Tech in 2017. He has more than ten years of research experience in Human-Computer Interaction from academia and industry, including Oakland University, Virginia Tech Center for HCI, and General Motors. He has served as PI or Co-PI of more than 10 research projects and published more than 30 papers in top-tier conferences and journals such as IEEE Virtual Reality, IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality, ACM Automotive User Interfaces, and ACM Intelligent User Interfaces, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, and Human Factors. He actively serves the above research communities as an organizer of international conferences and workshops.

Beyond User-Centered Design: Ecological Approach to the User Interface Design and Evaluation in Augmented Reality

EVL-affiliated faculty and Communication Distinguished Professor Steve Jones was part of the program committee for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Department of Communication day-long research forum - AI IMPACT. The forum discussed AI&rsquo;s benefits and challenges. From deep learning to deepfakes, from robotics to avatars, from ChatGPT to human augmentics, from virtual influencers to social bots and countless others, the symposium draws from a broad multidisciplinary understanding of AI to investigate how AI-supported technology can be used for the common good. 
Sessions included talks by EVL Director Mike Papka &ldquo;Computational Impact of AI&rdquo;, EVL alumn and Data Science Team Lead at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, Venkat Vishwanath &ldquo;AI for Science&rdquo;, as well as project demonstrations (Playground Spaces) by EVL research students: 
&ldquo;Visualization of Protein-Protein Interactions for Drug Discovery using LLMS&rdquo; - Aaqel Shaik, Michael E. Papka, Shilpika and Venkatram Vishwanath 
&ldquo;AI Engagement is XR (Multimodal AI)&rdquo; - Abdullah Ali, Ricky Massa, Aaqel Shaik, Michael E. Papka 
For more information on the Symposium and to review the program see <a href="https://las.uic.edu/events/las-faculty-research-symposium-ai-impact/">https://las.uic.edu/events/las-faculty-research-symposium-ai-impact/</a>

AI Impact Symposium

EVL undergraduate researcher Athena Angara discussed her summer internship project with Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF), &ldquo;Tele-robotics to Tele-autonomous Robotics for Isotope Production,&rdquo; during NVIDIA&rsquo;s weekly livestream, Community Spotlight: Unlocking Physical AI with Isaac Sim and OpenUSD. 
Angara is a senior studying data science. She spent her summer at the ALCF working on a DOE-funded project that leveraged virtual reality and augmented reality to create digital twins of critical components of robotic arms. Using Unreal Engine 5 and NVIDIA&rsquo;s Unity, Omniverse, and Isaac Sim, Angara developed an immersive display system with real-time, low latency, and high spatial resolution for remote control processes. She also converted data to ensure accurate representations between these digital platforms. 
NVIDIA&rsquo;s Omniverse is a real-time 3D graphics collaboration platform. It has been used for applications in the visual effects and &ldquo;digital twin&rdquo; industrial simulation industries. Omniverse makes extensive use of the Universal Scene Description format. 
To see more about the ALCF summer program see <a href="https://www.alcf.anl.gov/news/summer-students-tackle-supercomputing-and-ai-research-projects">&ldquo;Summer students tackle supercomputing and AI research projects&rdquo;</a> 
See the <a href="https://youtu.be/3jM1mjGqZ0Q?si=JWoxznDdeGTAv88H">YouTube video</a> of Angara&rsquo;s project.

&ldquo;Tele-robotics to Tele-autonomous Robotics for Isotope Production&rdquo; Presented at NVIDIA&rsquo;s Livestream

EVL hosts Jorge Wagner as a guest speaker, presenting &ldquo;Designing and Evaluating HMD-Based Immersive Analytics Environments&rdquo;. 
Friday 10/18/24, 1pm 
EVL Continuum, Room 2068 (Engineering Research Facility) 
Abstract 
The potential of Immersive Analytics approaches to enhance how humans understand and interact with data has attracted the attention of visualization researchers for decades, as is well illustrated by the work done at the EVL. Quick technological advances in head-mounted displays over the last years led to devices such as Meta Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro, bringing those techniques closer to widespread adoption. However, the design space for Immersive Analytics applications is vast, and it is crucial to understand the advantages and disadvantages of alternative designs. Over the last eight years, during the development of my Master&rsquo;s and PhD dissertations, I have studied the design of HMD-based environments for Immersive Analytics, investigating different data exploration metaphors, frames of reference, and modes of interaction. As a result, I have also proposed a series of ideas to reimagine existing visualization applications to take advantage of the benefits of immersion. In this talk, I will present an overview of my research work and my current ideas on this topic, with a deeper focus on my most recent paper, &ldquo;Reimagining TaxiVis,&rdquo; which I believe sets forth concepts that can be useful for other applications. 
Bio 
PhD student in Computer Science at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil, researching guidelines for efficient 3D data exploration with Immersive Analytics under the supervision of Prof. Luciana Nedel and Prof. Wolfgang Stuerzlinger. Jorge was a 2021-2022 Microsoft Research PhD Fellow and a Research Intern in Apple&rsquo;s Vision Products Group from April to October 2024. Recently, he was also a Fulbright Visiting Student Researcher at New York University, working under the supervision of Prof. Claudio Silva (2021-2022). Before that, he completed a six-month research internship with Prof. Stuerzlinger at Simon Fraser University, Canada, as part of the Emerging Leaders in the Americas program (2019).

Designing and Evaluating HMD-Based Immersive Analytics Environments

Andrew Wentzel presents his research entitled &ldquo;Digital Twins Visualization&rdquo; at the IEEE VIS2024 Conference at 3:30 (4:30 EDT) October 17, 2024. 
Abstract: 
Digital twin models are of high interest to Head and Neck Cancer (HNC) oncologists, who have to navigate a series of complex treatment decisions that weigh the efficacy of tumor control against toxicity and mortality risks. Evaluating individual risk profiles necessitates a deeper understanding of the interplay between different factors such as patient health, spatial tumor location and spread, and risk of subsequent toxicities that can not be adequately captured through simple heuristics. To support clinicians in better understanding tradeoffs when deciding on treatment courses, we developed DITTO, a digital-twin and visual computing system that allows clinicians to analyze detailed risk profiles for each patient, and decide on a treatment plan. DITTO relies on a sequential Deep Reinforcement Learning digital twin (DT) to deliver personalized risk of both long-term and short-term disease outcome and toxicity risk for HNC patients. Based on a participatory collaborative design alongside oncologists, we also implement several visual explainability methods to promote clinical trust and encourage healthy skepticism when using our system. We evaluate the efficacy of DITTO through quantitative evaluation of performance and case studies with qualitative feedback. Finally, we discuss design lessons for developing clinical visual XAI applications for clinical end users.

EVL PhD Candidate Andrew Wentzel Presents his Research at IEEE VIS2024

This year, students at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois Chicago College of Engineering participated in the <a href="https://ieeevis.org/year/2024/welcome">IEEE VIS 2024 Conference</a>. 
Prof. Liz Marai&rsquo;s students had several presentations. PhD Student Siyuan Zhao presented his work &ldquo;A Part-to-Whole Circular Cell Explorer&rdquo; at the Bio+Med+Vis Workshop on Oct 13. PhD Student Andrew Wentzel presented his paper <a href="https://www.evl.uic.edu/pubs/2827">&ldquo;DITTO: A Visual Digital Twin for Interventions and Temporal Treatment Outcomes in Head and Neck Cancer&rdquo;</a> on Oct 17. 
Prof. Fabio Miranda&rsquo;s PhD Student Gustavo Moreira presented his work <a href="https://www.evl.uic.edu/pubs/2843">&ldquo;Curio: A Dataflow-Based Framework for Collaborative Urban Visual Analytics&rdquo;</a> on Oct 16.
Dr. Saeed BoorBoor presented his two papers, &ldquo;VoxAR: Adaptive Visualization of Volume Rendered Objects in Optical See-Through Augmented Reality&rdquo; and &ldquo;Submerse: Visualizing Storm Surge Flooding Simulations in Immersive Display Ecologies&rdquo;. He will join as an EVL Faculty member at the University of Illinois Chicago next term. 
UIC&rsquo;s EVL faculty Liz Marai, PhD Students Md Nafiul Alam Nipu, Siyuan Zhao, and Hossein Fathollahian also participated at the VIS Chicago Satellite Event hosted by the University of Chicago Data Science Institute. After the watch party for the plenary session, we heard from faculty and PhD students at UChicago, UIC&rsquo;s EVL, Northwestern, and DePaul.

IEEE VIS 2024: Visualization & Virtual Analytics Virtual Conference

A team of collaborating researchers from EVL and others from the Equitable Health Data Science Institute (EHDS) members placed 2nd out of 17 teams in the EPIC COSMOS <a href="https://ehds.uic.edu/events/hackathon/">Hackaton at UIC sponsored by the EHDS</a>. Team members consisted of Ranga Chandrasekaran, Runa Bhaumik, Tommy Cheng, Andrew Wentzel, Nafiul Nipu, Hossein Fathollahian, and Sanjana Srabanti. 
The problem they tackled was: 
The mental health symptoms/diseases in cancer patients are often not recognized and managed. Compare the prevalence of mental health disorders in different cancers. 
The Institute for Equitable Health Data Science Research&rsquo;s mission is to analyze and eliminate potential biases before they are unwittingly embedded in artificial intelligence algorithms in healthcare. In particular, the institute, with its fabric of interdisciplinary collaborations, will shape solutions for biomedical and health data science and technology while prioritizing health equity for Chicago&rsquo;s diverse population and beyond. The institute is co-directed by Prof. Andrew Boyd and Prof. Elisabeta (Liz) Marai.

EVL Team Gets 2nd Place in EPIC Hackathon at UIC

Congratulations to Mike Papka, one of nine speakers at <a href="https://www.tedxchicago.com/">TEDxChicago 2024: Lighting the Way</a> to be held Friday, September 27th at Harris Theater, Millennium Park fro 3pm - 7pm. 
Mike holds a joint appointment as a UIC Computer Science faculty member and serves as the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility director at Argonne National Laboratory. As director of ALCF, Mike oversees the development and deployment of <a href="https://www.anl.gov/aurora">Aurora</a>, the <a href="https://top500.org/">world&rsquo;s second exascale supercomputer</a> and the fastest <a href="https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/intel-powered-aurora-supercomputer-breaks-exascale-barrier.html">AI supercomputer</a>. 
Mike is one of the inaugural recipients of the William S. McCulloch Collegiate Professorship of Computer Science. Warren S. McCulloch was a UIC professor of psychiatry who with Walter Pitts co-invented <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02478259">artificial neural networks in 1943</a>. Today, neural nets form the foundation of much AI technology, including deep learning and large language models. 
Mike is a professor of Computer Science, director of EVL, and co-director of the <a href="https://crabtree.uic.edu/">George Crabtree Institute for Discovery and Sustainability</a>.

UIC CS William McCulloch Professor Mike Papka speaking at TEDxChicago 2024

Computer Science (CS) Professor and EVL faculty Micheal E. Papka is being honored among only a few of his colleagues with the Warren S. McCulloch Professorship of Computer Science. This recognition is the first-ever CS Professorship Investiture. Dr. Papka and fellow CS Professor Barbara DiEugenio are the first two faculty to receive this award. 
Among the other honorees are Professor Cornelia Caragea - first holder of the Robert V. Kenyon Professorship of Computer Science and Distinguished Professor Bing Liu - first holder of the Peter L. and Deborah K. Wexler Professorship of Computing. 
At this inaugural event, both Bob Kenyon and his wife Cynthia Vahlkamp and Peter and Deborah Wexler will be reconginized for their very generous donations of professorships. 
The investiture will be held: 
Friday, September 20, 2024 
3:00 PM Reception, 3:30 PM Ceremony 
ERF West Atrium 
842 W Taylor St, Chicago, IL 60607 
For questions, contact <a href="mailto:rszandra@uic.edu">Ms. Renata Szandra</a>

Micheal E. Papka Honored with Warren S. McCulloch Professorships of Computer Science

September 16, 2024 - The University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) is proud to become an Intel AI/oneAPI Center of Excellence, advancing computational science education for AI and next-generation heterogeneous programming. The Center will integrate the open, standards-based oneAPI programming model and the latest AI development techniques into UIC&rsquo;s courses, preparing students to meet the demands of AI, high-performance computing (HPC), and data visualization in today&rsquo;s scientific and engineering landscapes. The Center of Excellence builds on the efforts of Dr. Michael E. Papka, who has supported Chicago-area university oneAPI workshops for the past two years and has been a strong advocate for oneAPI since its inception. 
UIC&rsquo;s AI/oneAPI Center of Excellence will be a hub for developing focused modules to enhance current AI, HPC, and visualization courses. The center will initially focus on developing modules to integrate seamlessly into regular classes and outreach activities, expanding access to advanced computational education for a wider audience. The goal at UIC is to prepare students to interpret and visually represent complex data sets using cutting-edge technologies such as Intel Embree and OSPRay and to teach them how to use SYCL in HPC to meet the challenges of exascale computing. 
&ldquo;The AI/oneAPI Centers of Excellence are aiding the next generation of developers in advancing future software innovation using the power of CPUs, GPUs, and other accelerators,&rdquo; says Dr. Michael E. Papka, Professor of Computer Science at UIC and the Director of the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, a Department of Energy Office of Science user facility at Argonne National Laboratory. &ldquo;This UIC-based collaboration with Intel offers valuable, real-world experience and opportunities for our students.&rdquo;
The UIC Center&rsquo;s AI and HPC curriculum will present essential tools and libraries, such as the oneAPI infrastructure for AI and Intel rendering tools, empowering students to optimize code for parallel architectures and high-performance multiarchitecture environments. Through hands-on labs and coding assignments, UIC students will tackle real-world optimization challenges, preparing them to leverage the immense power of exascale systems for scientific discovery. The next phase will consider adding AI curriculums addressing HPC and large-scale AI problems harnessing the power of Intel hardware. 
&ldquo;We are excited to see the impact of these educational advancements on our students and the broader scientific community,&rdquo; says Dr. Peter Nelson, Dean of Engineering and Professor of Computer Science at UIC. &ldquo;By integrating cutting-edge tools and technologies, we are fostering a versatile, technologically adept workforce capable of leveraging AI and HPC for scientific discovery.&rdquo;
Students will engage in projects such as visualizing climate change effects, showcasing energy resource distributions with interactive maps, and rendering materials science structures at the atomic level. These projects bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical application, connecting students&rsquo; work with real-world scenarios and emphasizing HPC&rsquo;s role in solving global challenges. Moreover, HPC supports the rise of AI applications in scientific computing by training complex AI models, from natural language processing to autonomous systems. This interaction between HPC and AI is crucial for advancing both fields, fostering innovation, and driving technological progress. 
&ldquo;UIC&rsquo;s Intel AI/oneAPI Center of Excellence will challenge students to drive complex and important computational projects such as simulating climate change impacts, modeling energy resource distributions, and exploring new materials properties. This brings real-world applicability of AI and HPC into the classroom, enabling the next generation of scientists and engineers to push the boundaries in helping to solve global challenges,&rdquo; says Joe Curley, vice president, and general manager of Intel Software Products and Ecosystems. 
This initiative represents a strategic alignment between academic curriculum development and industry needs. By equipping students with the skills and knowledge necessary to leverage AI, HPC, and visualization technologies, UIC is contributing to cultivating a highly skilled workforce capable of advancing the frontiers of science and engineering. 
For more information, please contact: 
Professor Michael E. Papka – <a href=mailto:"papka@uic.edu">papka@uic.edu</a>

University of Illinois Chicago Establishes a Center of Excellence focused on AI

Michael E. Papka has been announced as the new Director of EVL. Mike has a long history with EVL, starting in 1994 when he graduated with his Masters degree in Computer Science - - through many long-term collaborations between Argonne National Laboratory and EVL. 
After receiving his MS at UIC, Mike completed a second MS and PhD with the University of Chicago. Mike holds a joint appointment as a full UIC CS professor and at Argonne, where he has research and senior leadership positions. 
As the Director of the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ACLF), Mike leads one of the U.S. Department of Energy&rsquo;s premier facilities for open science. He has spearheaded numerous efforts to build and deploy world-class computing capabilities for open science, notably advancing AI and large-scale data analysis. Under his leadership, ALCF recently joined the exascale era with the development of the Aurora supercomputer. 
We welcome Mike as EVL&rsquo;s new leader!

Michael E. Papka Named EVL Director

EVL faculty and Computer Science (CS) Assistant Professor Fabio Miranda (PI) and Civil, Materials, and Environmental Engineering (CME) Professor Sybil Derrible (co-PI) have been awarded $1.75 million NSF grant entitled: "Collaborative Research: Frameworks: Cyberinfrastructure to Catalyze and Sustain the Urban Computing Community.” Also known as <a href="https://oscur.org/">&ldquo;The Open-Source Cyberinfrastructure for Urban Computing Research&rdquo; (OSCUR)</a>, the grant is part of an overall $5 million project that is collaborative with the University of Washington and NYU. Here at UIC, the overall effort includes the departments of CS, CME, and the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs (CUPPA). The grant will run from September 2024 to August 2029. 
Project Overview: 
Cities are the loci of resource consumption, economic activity, and innovation; they are where our looming sustainability problems were born and where those problems must be solved. Given our increasing ability to collect, transmit, store, and analyze data, we have the opportunity to go beyond today&rsquo;s imperfect and often anecdotal understanding of cities to enable better operations, better planning, and better policy. To understand cities, we must analyze the data exhaust from their components - infrastructure, environment, and people - and how they interact over space and time. While there are already troves of open data about cities, their potential remains largely untapped due to unique challenges related to diversity, scale, and complexity of both urban data and computations required to obtain insights from these data. In this project, we aim to democratize data-driven and data-intensive approaches in urban computing to empower a broad range of stakeholders to analyze urban data at scale and tackle problems from different domains, including transportation, accessibility, and disaster management. We will address two critical obstacles to greater progress in urban computing: the lack of documented, robust, well-engineered tools and open computing platforms, and a dispersed community of researchers and developers. At the core of our proposal is the development of a cyberinfrastructure that integrates methods and tools for the exploration of urban data that are scalable, reusable, interoperable, and offer solutions to common challenges, including data cleaning, management, and visualization. We will deploy an integrated suite of tools in a collaborative cloud environment, enabling users from different domains to easily reuse existing methods across domains to ensure sustainability, facilitate collaboration between researchers and developers, and develop a cohesive community. 
Keywords: urban data, urban science, big data

UIC Researchers Join National Project to Turn Urban Data into Healthier Cities

The Open-Source Cyberinfrastructure for Urban Computing Research (OSCUR) will create a cohesive ecosystem of tools and resources designed to transform city data into actionable knowledge. This multi-institutional collaboration is supported by a $5 million grant from the National Science Foundation, with $1.75 million allocated to UIC. 
The project includes researchers from UIC's College of Engineering and College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs who will collaborate with investigators from New York University and the University of Washington. UIC will leverage its expertise in visual data analysis, civil engineering, and government and community partnerships to design accessible computational tools focused on environmental justice, transportation, and other public priorities.

OSCUR

The &ldquo;Curio: A Dataflow-Based Framework for Collaborative Urban Visual Analytics&rdquo; paper was accepted to IEEE VIS 2024. Curio is a framework for collaborative urban visual analytics that uses a dataflow model with multiple abstraction levels (code, grammar, GUI elements) to facilitate collaboration across the design and implementation of visual analytics components. Curio allows users to build and iterate on dataflows with reusable modules, supporting collaborative design and tracking changes. We evaluated Curio with domain experts on urban accessibility, climate, and sunlight access. 
Video overview, source code, examples, and tutorials are available here: <a=href"https://urbantk.org/curio/">https://urbantk.org/curio/</a> 
The paper was led by PhD student Gustavo Moreira under EVL faculty and Computer Science assistant professor Fabio Miranda.

&ldquo;Curio&rdquo; Paper Accepted to IEEE VIS 2024

&ldquo;Assessing the Landscape of Toolkits, Frameworks, and Authoring Tools for Urban Visual Analytics Systems&rdquo; has been accepted for publication by Science Direct (Elsevier) in the Computer Graphics 2024 Journal. In this paper, researchers reviewed 135 works to assess the extent to which current open-source toolkits, frameworks, and authoring tools can effectively support the development of components tailored to urban visual analytics, identifying strengths and limitations in addressing the unique challenges posed by urban data. 
Project Overview 
The creation of visual analytics systems focused on urban issues has seen a notable surge. These systems simplify intricate urban analysis workflows into intuitive, interactive visual representations, enabling users to explore, understand, and derive insights from large, complex data. Examples of these datasets include street-level imagery, street networks, and building geometries. Developing urban visual analytics systems, however, is a challenging task that necessitates
significant programming expertise to handle several critical aspects, such as: (1) visualization to allow for data exploration in urban environments, (2) data management to integrate diverse urban data types and sources, (3) data analytics to highlight patterns and trends, and (4) system performance to ensure interactive response times. Furthermore, such development requires collaboration between stakeholders from different disciplines, including urban planning, public policy, public health, and climate sciences. The complexity involved and the tendency for these efforts to occur within the framework of one-off collaborations often lead to the creation of monolithic and isolated prototypes that are rarely made publicly available. Such a situation, with a notable lack of emphasis on interoperability as a design requirement, makes it difficult to extend existing systems and integrate discrete components into other tools.
The paper was led by PhD student Leonardo Ferreira under the advisement of EVL faculty and Computer Science assistant professor Fabio Miranda.

Typical steps in a workflow for urban data analysis.

Urban Visual Analytics Systems Research Published in Computer Graphics 2024 Journal

EVL faculty and Computer Science assistant professor Fabio Miranda along with colleagues Froehlich (UW, CS), Li (UW, CS), Hosseini (Berkeley, Planning), Sevtsuk (MIT, Planning), Eisenberg (UIC, Health) are organizing a virtual workshop focused on the role of AI in enhancing urban accessibility. All researchers and practitioners interested in Urban+AI and disability should consider submitting a proposal to the <a href="https://accessiblecities.github.io/UrbanAccess2024/">ASSETS&rsquo;24 Workshop &ldquo;The Future of Urban Accessibility: The Role of AI&rdquo;</a>. The deadline is September 20, 2024 
How will AI transform urban infrastructure for people with disabilities--from public transportation and sidewalks to the design and use of buildings, housing, parks, and transit stations? What new mobility tools and techniques will AI enable from autonomous vehicles and micro-mobility solutions to personalized routing and accessible interactive maps? How can AI be used to effectively and ethically to solve urban accessibility problems and improve the quality of life for all? How can and should people with disabilities be involved with decisions about how AI is used in cities? 
In this workshop, we examine the emerging role of AI in the design of equitable and accessible cities, transportation systems, and interactive tools for mapping and navigation. We invite short papers (broadly construed), including experience reports, position papers, vision pieces, demonstrations, pictorials, or research summaries up to approximately 2,000 words on this topic (approximately 3 pages of formatted, two-column output). See example topic areas. For the word count, you can exclude figures, tables, captions, and the reference list. As we aim for a broad representation of viewpoints, disciplines, and work practices, please choose a format that you feel best conveys your work (e.g., single column, double column, ACM template). 
Submitted artifacts should not be anonymized and, in addition to their primary content, should include a bio of each author and rationale for attending the workshop. PDF submissions should be accessible following the ASSETS&rsquo;24 Accessibility Guidelines. Artifacts will be reviewed and selected by the co-organizers to balance topics, geographies, and communities of focus. Accepted authors will be required to register and virtually attend the workshop via Zoom on a date in October. 
Our overarching goals are to identify open challenges in Urban AI + disability, share current work across disciplines, and spur new collaborations in Urban AI + disability. As a secondary goal, we aim to synthesize and publish our discussions together in a jointly authored report perhaps to the SIGACCESS Newsletter or beyond. 
The Workshop will be held the week of October 21st (tdb).

Call for Participation ASSETS&rsquo;24 Workshop &ldquo;The Future of Urban Accessibility: The Role of AI&rdquo;

A special screening of the Chicago Design Milestones 1920–2019 project will be exhibited on Monday, August 5 at 2pm at 150 Media Stream Chicago. The installation visualizes the evolution of Chicago design by its examination and presentation of historic characteristics of design works in the Chicago Design Archive (CDA) collection over the last 10 decades. 
Join us in congratulating EVL and Design professor Daria Tsoupikova and her colleagues on this seminal, creative work! 
August 5, 2024, 2pm 
150 N Riverside Plaza (lobby) 
Chicago, IL 60606 
Chicago Design Milestones was developed as a collaboration of CDA, the University of Illinois Chicago School of Design & Electronic Visualization Laboratory, and Columbia College Chicago. It is part of the ongoing research of this collaboration aiming to highlight the role of Chicago as a major national design center through the use of new technologies. 
150 Media Stream, the largest media screen (3,000+ sq ft) in Chicago, is comprised of 89 LED blades stretching 150 ft long and rising 22 ft high, located in the lobby of a downtown Chicago riverfront building. It is the only structure of its kind dedicated to showcasing Chicago artists, culture, and history alongside renowned and emerging artists from around the world. 
Links: 
<a href="https://150mediastream.com/about/">150MediaStream</a> 
<a href="https://chicagodesignarchive.org/essay/chicago-design-milestones">Chicago Design Milestones</a> 
<a href="https://150mediastream.com/archive/">MIlestones 150MediaStream Archive</a> 
Creators: 
Daria Tsoupikova (UIC), Sharon Oiga (UIC/CDA), Guy Villa Jr (CCC), Jack Weiss (CDA), Cheri Gearhart (CDA), Wayne Stuetzer (CDA), Krystofer Kim (NASA), Ali Khan (UIC) 
Grant funding support: 
Riverside/150 Media Stream, Columbia College Chicago, UIC College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts 
Curated by Yuge Zhou

Chicago Design Milestones 1920–2019 Showcased at 150 Media Stream

EVL PhD candidate Ke Fan has been named a recipient of the 2024 ACM-IEEE CS George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowship. The fellowship honors exceptional PhD students throughout the world whose research focus is on high-performance computing applications, networking, storage, or large-scale data analytics using the most powerful computers that are currently available. The fellowship is named after George Michael one of the founders of the Supercomputing Conference. 
Read the <a href="https://www.acm.org/media-center/2024/august/george-michael-fellowship-recipients-2024">AMC news release</a>. 
Join us in congratulating Ke and her advisor Computer Science Assistant Professor and EVL faculty Sidharth Kumar on this exceptional distinction!

EVL PhD Candidate Ke Fan Named 2024 ACM-IEEE CS George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowship

EVL affiliated faculty and Computer Science assistant professor Wei Tang has been awarded his first NSF grant entitled &ldquo;CCSS: Modeling and Learning Space-time Structures for Real-time Environment Perception&rdquo;. 
Amount: $240,000 
Dates: August 1, 2024-July 31, 2027 
Brief abstract: 
Developing sensing circuits and systems capable of perceiving the physical environment is an essential step toward next-generation cyber-physical systems that leverage computation, communication, and sensing integrated with the physical domain. The recent introduction of a class of artificial intelligence (AI) methods known as deep learning has drastically advanced vision-based environment perception. However, the applicability of these methods is significantly limited by their reliance on vast amounts of 3D annotations for training, which are expensive, unnatural, and often unobtainable. Acquiring 3D annotations necessitates specialized data captured by 3D sensors rather than utilizing abundant and readily available images or videos. Moreover, it requires a controlled environment or compromises with inaccurate subjective labeling. This project aims to address real-time environment perception in a very challenging, largely unexplored, yet highly practical setting, where only 2D annotations are available during training, by modeling and learning rich space-time structures of the environment. The outcomes of this project will significantly impact cyber-physical systems and facilitate a wide range of applications, from robots in manufacturing and personal services to autonomous vehicles that enhance people&rsquo;s mobility and safety. Furthermore, this project will tightly integrate research and education at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), which is a Minority Serving Institution (MSI), through curriculum development, research training for high school, undergraduate, and graduate students, broadening the participation of female and minority students, and community outreach.

Wei Tang Awarded NSF Grant &ldquo;CCSS: Modeling and Learning Space-time Structures for Real-time Environment Perception&rdquo;

The July 2024 issue of IEEE Computing Edge magazine&rsquo; section on Data Visualization features the contrail visual computing digital twin work conducted by EVL graduate students Nafiul Nipu, and Carla Floricel, along with their advisor professor G. Elisabeta Marai. This research was done in collaboration with professor Roberto Paoli (MIE). 
Contrails are condensation trails generated from emitted particles by aircraft engines, which perturb Earth's radiation budget. Simulation modeling is used to interpret the formation and development of contrails. These simulations are computationally intensive and rely on high-performance computing solutions, and the contrail structures are not well defined. We propose a visual computing system to assist in defining contrails and their characteristics, as well as in the analysis of parameters for computer-generated aircraft engine simulations. The back end of our system leverages a contrail-formation criterion and clustering methods to detect contrails&rsquo; shape and evolution and identify similar simulation runs. The front-end system helps analyze contrails and their parameters across multiple simulation runs. The evaluation with domain experts shows this approach successfully aids in contrail data investigation.

Visual analysis of contrails using multiple coordinated views.

EVL Researchers&rsquo; Contrail Digital Twin Work Featured in IEEE CS Magazine

The first Creative Coding Community Workshop brought together a diverse group of Chicago public high school students ranging in age from 13 to 15 to introduce students to the basics of coding, interactive 3D, typography and game design. Hosted at the University of Illinois Chicago&rsquo;s (UIC), Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) and organized by professor Daria Tsoupikova, participating students productively conquered a steep learning curve to learn the basics of coding, - starting from ground zero to produce interactive Virtual Reality (VR) projects for a public exhibition – all within 2 weeks! Their projects investigated critical global concepts such as global warming, air and water pollution, migration, and mental health in immersive dimensions of Computer Science + Design. Several projects were featured in the CAVE2 Hybrid Reality Environment VR exhibition after the Workshop. The Workshop was a tremendous success and very well received by participants and organizers. 
Congratulations to all participants and good luck with your future pursuits in Computer Science and Design! 
Special thanks to <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/arthur-nishimoto-55a61047/">Arthur Nishimoto</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/farah-kamleh-aa8b41248/">Farah Kamleh</a>. 
<a href="https://youtu.be/8YZdeWj8uA4">See a video documenting the Workshop.</a> 
This Workshop was made possible through support from EVL and UIC.

Participant in CAVE2 Hybrid Reality Environment

UIC&rsquo;s First Creative Coding Community Workshop a Tremendous Success!

EVL affiliated faculty and assistant professor of Computer Science Wei Tang has been appointed by Science Direct as associate editor of the journal &ldquo;Pattern Recognition&rdquo;.  The journal publishes developments in the fields of computer vision, image processing, text and document analysis, and neural networks. Dr. Tang&rsquo;s expertise in these fields makes him the perfect candidate for this position.  We congratulate Dr. Tang on his appointment.

Wei Tang Appointed Associate Editor for &ldquo;Pattern Recognition&rdquo;

EVL is that connection! The Laboratory has a long and rich history in the computer graphics - visualization discipline. Founded in 1973 by co-directors Thomas A. DeFanti and Daniel J. Sandin, EVL&rsquo;s foundation has been in innovation and collaboration, which attracted animator Larry Cuba to the lab. Hired by George Lucas to create the briefing room sequence animation for &ldquo;Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope&rdquo;, Cuba contracted with EVL to produce the animation using EVL tools over a three month period at UIC. The Star Wars connection is but one of EVL&rsquo;s many accomplishments and inventions. 
Read the full UIC <a href="https://emails.uofi.uic.edu/newsletter/25/1974977825.html">Honors College E-News</a> article, which includes a historic interview on the project with Tom DeFanti.

Did you know that UIC has a Star Wars connection?

EVL PhD candidate Andrew Wentzel is recognized by the UIC College of Engineering for his extraordinary research with the annual Exceptional Research Promise Award. The award recognizes PhD students who are within a year of graduating (i.e., have completed their prelim examination) and have demonstrated excellence in scholarship, academic publication, and other research-focused activities. Andrew&rsquo;s publication record during his doctoral studies so far is remarkable: 14 publications. He is the first author of six journal publications in top-tier venues, three in core visual computing venues, and three in clinical venues. He is the first author of two additional workshop papers in competitive venues (<30% acceptance rate), and a co-author and significant contributor of six other journal publications. Results from Andrew&rsquo;s work have been included in a 2023 European textbook in the visual computing field, and have been featured on the cover of the Journal of Imaging Science and Technology. 
Learn more about the origins of this <a href="https://engineering.uic.edu/news-stories/new-award-honors-promising-phd-students/#:~:text=Called%20the%20Graduate%20Student%20Award,and%20other%20research%2Dfocused%20activities">College of Engineering special program</a>. 
Join us in congratulating our colleague on this well deserved honor!

EVL PhD Candidate Andrew Wentzel Wins CoE Exceptional Research Promise Award

Candidate: Sai Priya Jyothula 
Committee: 
Dr. Andrew Johnson, Advisor and Chair 
Dr. Steve Jones (Department of Communication) 
Dr. Debaleena Chattopadhyay 
Dr. Joseph Michaelis 
Dr. Venugopal Vasudevan (Procter and Gamble) 
Location: 2068 ERF 
Date and time: Thursday, April 25, 11:30 AM - 1 PM CST 
Abstract: 
Collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) are shared virtual spaces that bring users together and allow them to interact with each other and virtual objects. In asymmetric CVEs, users have varied roles, interaction capabilities, perspectives, and device configurations, which can be leveraged to achieve user objectives. The main objective of my research is to use these asymmetric virtual environments as a means to augment people and enable them to transcend their physical, sensory and cognitive limitations. Specifically, I focus on facilitating the expression and access of deeper metaphors of the mind. 
The two exploratory studies that I discuss in this dissertation aim to understand the usage context and evaluate the effectiveness of utilizing asymmetrical virtual environments to augment metaphor elicitation. Understanding the usage context helps to design guidelines for future systems that not only focus on the efficiency of the system individually but also consider how the system augments human capabilities. With this objective, this work also introduces a systematic approach for developing future systems, which integrates the insights from the two studies to improve the prototype system and the metaphor elicitation process.

The left image shows a participant while using the VR system during the metaphor elicitation interview; the right image shows the participant&rsquo;s view mirrored on the display screen during the interview.

PhD Dissertation Announcement &ldquo;Supporting Metaphor Elicitation in Asymmetric Virtual Environments&rdquo;

Candidate: Ashwini G. Naik 
Committee Members: 
Dr. Andrew Johnson (Advisor and Chair) 
Dr. Robert Kenyon (Co-Advisor) 
Dr. Debaleena Chattopadhyay 
Dr. Nikita Soni 
Dr. Steve Jones (External Member - Dept. of Communication) 
Date and Time: Wednesday, April 24th, 2024, 10 AM - 12 PM AM CST 
Location: ERF 2036 
Abstract: 
Meetings and conversations today are multimodal in nature, including the usage of diverse technologies in the form of text, video, images, voice, AI agents, and also immersive technologies. If it were possible to replay important multimodal conversations in their spatial and chronological contexts, it would benefit several audiences, such as - researchers to study and analyze multimodal conversations, novices in any field who could learn from experts, experts who have missed being part of crucial conversations. However, recreating such multimodal interactions requires integrating all of the modalities used in the conversation. Immersive environments provide a convenient setting to present data with its spatial and temporal referents through the use of situated analytics. We present MuSA (Multimodal Situated Analytics), an immersive environment prototype, as a way to recreate multimodal conversations for exploration and analysis in immersive environments. Our development pipeline consisted of various stages such as data capturing, data cleaning, data synchronization, prototype building, and deploying the final product to end-user hardware. We conducted two comprehensive user studies to evaluate the usability, user adoption, and space usage during the exploration of multimodal conversations with our application. In the first study, we explore conversations between seated participants (n=12), and in the second, we explore conversations between non-seated moving participants (n=13). We share insights gained during the development phase, as well as empirical results and feedback collected through both user studies.

(a)Data Collection: 2 participants +  visual conversational AI agent (b)User Study: Replaying (a) in VR - MuSA in Quest2. (c)Data Collection: 2 participants exploring AR (d)User Study: Replaying (c) in Mixed Reality through MuSA in HoloLens2.

PhD Dissertation Announcement: &ldquo;Multimodal Situated Analytics (MuSA) for Analyzing Conversations in Extended Reality&rdquo;

The George Crabtree Institute for Discovery and Sustainability is an institutional partnership between Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), enabling transformative solutions for complex scientific challenges. This collaboration aims to advance knowledge in science and technology, propel sustainable innovation, promote diversity in perspectives, and be supportive of the next generation of researchers. 
EVL and Computer Science professor Michael E. Papka and Jordi Cabana will lead the institute as its founding co-directors, actively engaging with Argonne and UIC in their current leadership roles. Their co-director roles will bring forward collaboration opportunities, coordinate within and across both institutions and support future scientists and interdisciplinary, inclusive research. 
Some of the institute&rsquo;s initial programming includes faculty engagement via the Argonne Collaborative Research Fellowship Program, which is supported through strategic use of the Joint Appointment Program, recruitment of undergraduate and graduate students, and scientific workshops.

EVL Professor Michael Papka co-Directs the George Crabtree Institute for Discovery and Sustainability

Honors Faculty Fellows are individually assigned to provide personalized advising and mentoring to students. Each year, Honors College students nominate Fellows to be honored as &ldquo;Fellow of the Year&rdquo;s for excellence in mentoring.  This year&rsquo; Faculty Fellow is EVL Professor G. Elisabeta Marai.  Join us in celebrating this noteworthy achievement and honorable recognition.  Congratulations, Liz!

EVL Professor G. Elisabeta Marai Awarded Faculty Fellow of the Year

In 2023, the University of Illinois Chicago&rsquo;s (UIC) Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research launched a program to fund interdisciplinary research by forming and funding pilot research institutes to bring together the unique strengths of UIC&rsquo;s colleges. The newest pilot research institute - the Institute for Equitable Health Data Science Research (EHDSR) - will leverage UIC&rsquo;s cutting-edge data science and artificial intelligence (AI) expertise together with the university&rsquo;s health enterprise. The goal is to unite researchers from seven colleges to ensure that medical applications of new technologies benefit all populations without bias. 
EHDSR is co-directed by Andrew Boyd and Elisabeta Marai, who bring their expertise in data science and healthcare to manage this highly interdisciplinary endeavor. The mission of the Institute is to analyze and eliminate potential healthcare biases before they are unwittingly embedded in artificial intelligence algorithms in healthcare. With its interdisciplinary collaborations, the effort will shape solutions for biomedical and health-data science and technology while prioritizing health equity for Chicago&rsquo;s diverse population and beyond.

Chicago Health Atlas map of Life expectancy in Community areas-2

EVL Profesor G. Elisabeta Marai Co-Directs UIC Institute for Equitable Health Data Science Research

EVL Professor Liz Marai has been appointed as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications publication. 
As per André Stork, CG&A Editor in Chief, &ldquo;IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications uniquely combines leading-edge technical papers with sometimes-provocative opinion articles. Together, they explore the various applications of computer graphics in our lives - including entertainment, industry, culture, society, and health - from academic and practitioner perspectives.&rdquo; 
Join us in congratulating Liz on her latest achievement and contribution to the field of visualization!

Marai Appointed Associate Editor IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications

Oren Safdie&rsquo;s visionary play &ldquo;Façade&rdquo; will be performed in EVL&rsquo;s Continuum, Friday February 9th, 6:30pm - 8:30pm. The program will consist of the staged reading followed by a questions & answers session with Playwright Oren Safdie, EVL, and Lira Luis FRIBA FRSA NCARB
RA LEED AP. 
Safdie&rsquo;s provocative script explores contemporary architecture&rsquo;s high-stakes world, tackling themes of ambition, ego, and the clash between architectural vision and commercial reality. Visualized by architect Lira Luis, FRIBA, FRSA, NCARB, RA, LEED AP, the staged reading pushes the boundaries of storytelling with a unique blend of live actors, cutting-edge immersive technology, and a metaverse-inspired setting. 
Presented in Partnership with Chicago Architecture Biennial.

&ldquo;Façade&rdquo; Press Release

EVL Hosts &ldquo;Façade&rdquo; - A Metaverse Reading Experiment

EVL Professor Michael Papka is among 52 ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery Distinguished Members inducted into the International Computing Society for significant contributions towards pivotal education, engineering, and science. Each Distinguished Member is a longstanding ACM Member selected by their peers for work that has advanced computing, fostered innovation across various fields, and improved computer science education. 
Dr. Papka is recognized for his contributions in virtual reality, collaborative environments, scientific visualization, as well as research and operations in high-performance computing. EVL faculty, staff and students congratulate him on this prestigious honor! 
See the <a href="https://www.acm.org/media-center/2024/january/distinguished-members-2023">ACM Media Center</a> for the full press release and information on the other recognized members for 2023.

ACM Distinguished Members 2023 Press Release

EVL Professor Michael Papka Recognized as ACM Distinguished Member

EVL SAGE3 developers Luc Renambot and Lance Long with collaborators from the University of Hawaii Manoa and Virginia Tech present the latest advances in SAGE3 at the <a href="https://www.agu.org/fall-meeting">American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting 2023</a> held December 11-15, 2023 in San Francisco, CA. 
The AGU Fall Meeting convenes annually, attracting >25,000 attendees from 100+ countries to showcase their research and network among colleagues. Researchers, scientists, educators, students, policymakers, exhibitors, journalists and communicators attend AGU Fall Meeting to better understand our planet and environment, and our role in preserving its future. It is a results-oriented gathering, rooted in celebrating and advancing positive individual and collective outcomes. 
The SAGE3 team presented the latest version of the SAGE environment to the AGU 2023 attendees on the exhibition floor, focussing on data visualization, no-code dashboard building, and advanced collaboration, with examples using geoscience applications.

SAGE3 Developers and Colllaborators from EVL/UIC, University of Hawaii Manoa and Virginia Tech at AGU 2023 booth.

EVL Presents SAGE3 at AGU Fall Meeting 2023

PhD Student: Andrew Wentzel 
Committee members: 
Dr G.Elisabeta Marai (chair) 
Dr. Xinhua Zhang 
Dr. Fabio Miranda 
Dr. Guadalupe Canahuate (University of Iowa) 
Dr. Renata Raidou (Vienna University of Technology) 
Date Time: Wednesday, Dec 6th at 10 am CST 
Location: ERF 2068 
Zoom Details: 
<a href="https://uic.zoom.us/j/83499037419?pwd=MFhvVHg2aXNZWnZwZHBhM0RKUE5ZQT09">Join Zoom Meeting</a> 
Meeting ID: 834 9903 7419 
Passcode: L1fCBhu9 
One tap mobile 
+13126266799,,83499037419#,,,,*43232065# US (Chicago) 
+13092053325,,83499037419#,,,,*43232065# US 
Abstract: 
Research in visual computing (VC) focuses on integrating visual representations of datasets with computing systems, thus leveraging the complementary abilities of humans and machines. The resulting VC systems may include machine learning (ML) techniques, which have remarkable abilities in terms of processing vast amounts of data. However, creating VC+ML systems that can operate on spatio-temporal data is a largely unexplored, difficult topic. Challenges in this area include: capturing domain characterizations for spatial VC+ML problems, in particular when serving both ML model builders and ML model clients; creating explainable VC+ML models that can operate on spatial data, including measures that can capture spatial structure similarity; designing visual encodings for ML models that use spatial information and that enhance the modeler and client understanding of the model; and measuring the effect of deploying such VC+ML systems in practice. 
Based on several multi-year collaborations, I document several instances where spatial and explainable VC+ML solutions are required, and what role spatiality plays in these instances. Throughout this process, I extract and describe design requirements for explainable spatial VC+ML systems, and I identify necessary VC advances, including spatially-aware similarity measures and spatial visual explainability. I construct spatially-aware similarity measures to support ML problems in precision oncology, patient risk stratification in data mining, and explainable interactive regression modeling for hypothesis testing in social science. I introduce novel encodings for 3-dimensional and geospatial data and explore how to integrate such encodings with ML model explanations. I implement and evaluate several VC+ML systems and several resulting models that are explicitly designed to integrate domain-specific structural spatial information and unsupervised ML. Throughout this process, I also articulate design lessons related to model actionability. In my proposed work, I expand my focus to exploring the issue of spatial VC+ML explainability, this time in a supervised deep-learning setting.

Presentation Slides

PhD Prelim Announcement: Visual Computing Design for Explainable, Spatially-aware Machine Learning

&ldquo;MouseScholar: Evaluating an Image+Text Search System for Biocuration&rdquo;, Juan Trelles Trabucco, Carla Floricel, Cecilia Arighi, Hagit Shatkay, Daniela Raciti, Martin Ringwald, and G. Elisabeta Marai is an accepted paper at 2023 IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine (IEEE BIBM 2023). Of the 1084 paper submissions submitted to BIBM this year, only 211 regular papers were accepted (acceptance rate: 19.5%). 
Project Description: 
In this work, we instantiate and evaluate a first-in-kind, hybrid image+text document search system for biocuration (the process of analyzing biological or biomedical articles to organize biological data into data repositories using taxonomies and ontologies). The system, MouseScholar, leverages an image modality taxonomy derived in collaboration with biocurators, in addition to figure segmentation, and classifiers components as a back-end and a streamlined front-end interface to search and present document results. We formally evaluated the system with ten biocurators on a mouse genome informatics biocuration dataset and collected feedback. The results demonstrate the benefits of blending text and image information when presenting scientific articles for biocuration. 
Congratulations EVL research team on being accepted for publication with this prestigious Conference!

Biocuration taxonomy of figures in scientific publications, with examples.

EVLers Juan Trelles Trabucco, Carla Floricel and Professor Elisabeta Marai Biocuration Research Recognized by IEEE BIBM 2023

EVl graduate student Hal Brynteson&rtsquo;s research in fluid dynamics will be showcased in Washington, DC at the Gallery of Fluid Motion during the 76th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics. The Gallery of Fluid Motion is a visual record of the aesthetic and science of contemporary fluid mechanics shared with researchers in the discipline, as well as the general public. Submissions are judged on an annual basis for their visual qualities and scientific interest. 
Brynteson&rsquo;s poster entitled &ldquo;Effects of employing liquid-liquid emulsions on heat transfer within a turbulent Rayleigh-Benard convection&rdquo; (Authors: H. Brynteson, A. Moradi Bilondi, N. Scapin, L. Brandt, P. Mirbod, M.E. Papka) will be presented November 20th.

EVL Researcher Hal Brynteson&rsquo;s Work Showcased at the Gallery of Fluid Motion

PhD student Ke Fan&rsquo;s research in profiling and visualizing performance data at scale is recognized with a best poster nomination at SC23. &ldquo;Two-phase IO Enabling Large-scale Performance Introspection&rdquo; focuses on developing an effective and interactive exploration of the profiles of large-scale parallel programs, which remain a challenge due to the high I/O overheads of profiles and the difficulties in scaling downstream visualization tools. 
The poster presents Viveka, a lightweight end-to-end system for profiling and visualizing the performance of MPI-based applications. 
- A simple data format for the generated logs that minimizes metadata, leading to a smaller storage footprint and faster load times. (on average 3x more lightweight than Caliper). 
- Development of a custom two-phase data aggregation system to scale parallel I/O (of performance data) to high core counts, ensuring minimal overhead. 
- A lightweight web-based visualization dashboard that is capable of performing interactive analysis of performance data collected at high process counts. 
- A case study on real parallel applications to demonstrate the efficacy of our profiling and visualization system. 
Funding in part by NSF RII Track-4 award 2132013, NSF PPoSS planning award 2217036, NSF PPoSS large award 2316157 and, NSF collaborative research award 2221811. Compute hours provided on Theta Supercomputer Argonne Leadership Computing Facility&rsquo;s Directors Discretionary (DD) program.

Two-phase IO Enabling Large-scale Performance Introspection

The challenges of profiling and visualizing large-scale parallel programs

EVL Affiliated Faculty Sidharth Kumar&rsquo;s Advisee Recognized with Best Poster Nomination at SC23

A team led by researchers at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF) including EVL Professor Mike Papka was recognized with the Best Paper Award for an innovative scientific visualization study presented at the 2023 In Situ Infrastructures for Enabling Extreme-scale Analysis and Visualization (ISAV) at the SC23 conference in Denver, Colorado. 
The paper, &ldquo;Scaling Computational Fluid Dynamics: In Situ Visualization of NekRS using SENSEI,&rdquo; (Mateevitsi, V.A., Bode, M., Ferrier, N., Fischer, P., Göbbert, J.H., Insley, J.A., Lan, Y., Min, M., Papka, M.E., Patel, S., Rizzi, S., Windgassen, J.) details the team&rsquo;s efforts to equip the NekRS computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code with in situ analysis and visualization capabilities. The winning paper explores the benefits of instrumenting the NekRS code with SENSEI, an open-source in situ interface developed with support from DOE&rsquo;s Exascale Computing Project. The researchers demonstrated the capabilities and scalability of their approach by running two real scientific use cases on the ALCF&rsquo;s Polaris supercomputer and JSC&rsquo;s JUWELS Booster supercomputer. They found that the ability to &ldquo;see&rdquo; the data in real-time significantly augmented their analytical capacities.

Visualization of the pb146 use case simulation, illustrating flow dynamics within a pebble-bed nuclear reactor.

ALCF Team Including EVL Professor Michael Papka Wins Best Paper at SC23 ISAV 2023 Workshop

EVL&rsquo;s professor Marai is part of UIC&rsquo;s brain research now funded by a $5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. The project incorporates brain tissue research at UIC, Northwestern University, Lurie Children’s Hospital, Rush University, and the University of Chicago, utilizing the INTUITION data platform that combines tissue data with clinical, functional, genetic, and 3D imaging information. The goal of the project is to assist clinicians in treating patients and help researchers better understand the mechanisms of brain disorders by developing a new resource for clinical care and research on epilepsy, brain tumors, and neurological disorders. 
The project is led by Dr. Jeffrey Loeb, the John S. Garvin Endowed Chair in Neurology at UIC, professor, and head of neurology and rehabilitation in the College of Medicine. INTUITION was initially supported by funding from the Discovery Partners Institute to create I-BRAIN, an initiative exploring commercialization opportunities around brain tissue data and research. Other UIC researchers include Dr. Anna Serafini, Biswajit Maharathi, Fozia Mir and Dr. Ahmad Daher from the Department of Neurology and Rehabilitation; Dr. Francesco Pucci from the Department of Neurosurgery; and Dr. Tibor Valyi-Nagy from the Department of Pathology. 
For the full article see <a href="https://today.uic.edu/nih-grant-expands-uic-brain-bank-into-citywide-effort-to-study-epilepsy-brain-cancer/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=today%2B02.14.23">UIC today</a>.

The Percival Bailey Brain Collection, located in UIC&rsquo;s Neuropsychiatric Institute.

EVL Professor G. Elisabeta Marai Part of Research Team Awarded NIH Funding to Expand UIC&rsquo;s Brain Bank

EVL Research Associate Professor Luc Renambot joins collaborators from the University of Hawaii Manoa and Virginia Tech to present the latest advances in SAGE3 with a tutorial session at the <a href="https://iss2023.acm.org/">ACM ISS 2023</a>. 
SAGE3, the newest and most advanced generation of the Smart Amplified Group Environment, is an open-source software designed to facilitate collaboration among scientists, researchers, students, and professionals across various fields. This tutorial aims to introduce attendees to the capabilities of SAGE3, demonstrating its ability to enhance collaboration and productivity in diverse settings, from co-located office collaboration to remote collaboration to both at once, with diverse displays, from personal laptops to large-scale display walls. Participants will learn how to effectively use SAGE3 for brainstorming, data analysis, and presentation purposes, as well as installation of private collaboration servers and development of custom applications. 
Presenters: 
Jesse Harden, Virginia Tech 
Nurit Kirshenbaum, University of Hawaii at Manoa 
Roderick S. Tabalba Jr., University of Hawaii at Manoa 
Jason Leigh, University of Hawaii at Manoa 
Luc Renambot, University of Illinois Chicago, EVL 
Chris North, Virginia Tech 
In-person and on-line Sunday Nov 5, 3 to 4:30PM, and Wed. Nov 8 1PM to 2:30 PM.

SAGE3 Tutorial Sessions at ACM Interactive Surfaces and Spaces Conference (ACM ISS 2023)

EVL alumnus Khairi Reda presents his research at EVL tech meeting: 
Friday, November 3, 2023, 12PM - 1PM 
EVL Continuum, Room 2068 ERF 
Towards Trustworthy Visual Analytics 
Abstract: Interactive visualization tools, such as Tableau, Jupyter notebooks, and R with ggplot, have become vital instruments in the data science ecosystem. These systems empower users to explore data and search for new patterns that might lead to insights. However, these tools can also expose analysts to noise and random data fluctuations. Analysts can frequently misinterpret these spurious patterns and mistake them for reliable effects. This phenomenon has led to a &ldquo;replication crisis,&rdquo; with many previously published results failing to replicate, eroding trust in the scientific process. 
In this talk, Reda will discuss his research on reducing the risk of spurious visualizations and describe techniques we have developed to operationalize analyst hypotheses and beliefs in the visual analytics process. Empirical results showing that these unobtrusive interactions can promote good analytical practices and reduce the incidence of false discoveries will be discussed. Finally, Reda will show how using visual inference as a benchmark can provide a complementary account of visualization utility, leading to new insights into visualization design beyond what can be learned from traditional &ldquo;graphical perception&rdquo; studies. 
Bio: Khairi Reda is an Associate Professor in the Luddy School of Informatics & Computing at Indiana University Indianapolis. He is an alumnus of EVL, having earned a PhD in CS from the University of Illinois at Chicago. His research employs a variety of methods, weaving together techniques from human-computer interaction, machine learning, and design thinking to investigate new approaches for visualizing and interacting with data.

EVL Alumnus Khairi Reda Presents his Research &ldquo;Towards Trustworthy Visual Analytics&rdquo;

EVL researchers M. Mantovani, A. Wentzel, J. Trelles, J. Michaelis, G.E. Marai have an image of their visualization research featured on the cover of the Journal of Imaging Science and Technology, Vol 67 No 6, Nov/Dec 2023 issue. &ldquo;Kiviat Defense: An Empirical Evaluation of Visual Encoding Effectiveness in Multivariate Data Similarity Detection&rdquo; was presented in January 2024 at the Electronic Imaging Conference in Burlingame, CA. 
Congratulations EVL student and faculty researchers!

EVL Research Team&rsquo;s Visualization Featured on the Journal of Imaging Science and Technology

EVL alumni Tommy Marrinan, Victor Mateevitsi and Mike Papka (also EVL Professor) are recognized at <a href="https://sciviscontest2023.github.io/">2023 IEEE VIS SciVis Contest</a> for their research in the visualization of neuronal network simulations of plasticity changes in the human brain. 
The first award was for Best Workflow; enabling a scientific workflow was identified as one of the 4 main tasks for this year&rsquo;s contest. The goal of this component was to combine the functionality of the other tasks into a combined framework and interface that enables experts to explore the data and investigate several questions interactively. Which tools help the users to mark, select, and analyze the data on different levels of complexity and transfer information among these levels? 
The second award was for 1st Place Overall; judges took into account how the submission addressed all 4 main tasks, as well as any additional features. The judging was based on a short paper description of the visualization system and an 8-minute video demo. 
Congratulations, Tommy, Victor, and Mike! 
See <a href="https://insidehpc.com/2023/11/alcf-team-wins-first-place-and-best-workflow-at-2023-ieee-scivis-contest/">Inside HPC</a>, &ldquo;ALCF Team Wins First Place and Best Workflow at 2023 IEEE SciVis Contest&rdquo;

EVL Alumni Win Best Workflow and 1st Place Overall at 2023 IEEE SciVis Contest

EVL affiliated faculty member and Computer Science Assistant Professor Sidharth Kumar and his graduate students Landon Dyken and Will Usher are recognized with the Best Paper Award at the 13th IEEE Symposium on Large Data Analysis and Visualization. This year&rsquo;s LDAV 2023 focus is on Big Data Analysis and Visualization, specifically targeting methodological innovation, algorithmic foundations, and possible end-to-end solutions. 
&ldquo;Speculative Progressive Raycasting for Memory Constrained Isosurface Visualization of Massive Volumes&rdquo; (Usher, W., Dyken, L., Kumar, S.) proposes a new GPU algorithm for implicit isosurface rendering that progressively traverses rays through the volume and decompresses data on-demand to minimize its memory footprint. Up to 5.7× reductions in overall memory use and 8.4× reductions in data decompressed compared to the state of the art in memory constrained isosurface extraction is acheived, without sacrificing interactivity. At 1280×720, the Richtmyer-Meshkov averages 264ms per-pass and 1.2s total on an RTX 3080. 
Congratulations team!

EVL Affiliated Faculty Sidharth Kumar&rsquo;s Advisees Recognized with Best Paper Award at LDAV 2023

The EVL research team lead by Professor Liz Marai and graduate research assistants Carla Floricel and Andrew Wentzel has their visual analytics work published at the IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics session at the IEEE Vis 2023 Conference held in Melbourne, Australia, October 22- 27, 2023. &ldquo;Roses Have Thorns: Understanding the Downside of Oncological Care Delivery Through Visual Analytics and Sequential Rule Mining&rdquo; (authors: Carla Gabriela Floricel, Andrew Wentzel, Abdallah Mohamed, Clifton David Fuller, Guadalupe Canahuate, G. Elisabeta Marai) is an interactive analysis system to support sequential rule mining (SRM) model builders who work in cancer symptom research. SRM is a promising unsupervised machine learning method for predicting longitudinal patterns in temporal data which, however, can output many repetitive patterns that are difficult to interpret without the assistance of visual analytics. Our system facilitates mechanistic knowledge discovery of treatment-related toxicities (i.e., &ldquo;roses have thorns&rdquo;) in large-scale cohort data. 
This work was developed by visual computing researchers at EVL in collaboration with data mining specialists at the University of Iowa, and clinicians at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas, and it is supported by funding from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH awards NCI-R01-CA258827 and NLM-R01-LM012527), and US National Science Foundation (NSF awards CDSE-1854815 and CNS-1828265).

Visual representation of treatment comparison.

EVL Research Team Publishes Their Visual Analytics Research for Oncological Care

The National Science Foundation has awarded EVL a Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) grant to build the Data Observation and Computation Collaboratory (DOCC) in the new Computer Design Research and Learning Center (CDRBC) building. The Data Observation and Computation Collaboratory (DOCC, &rsquo;the dock&rsquo;) is a much-needed visual data science instrument for UIC science and engineering research and research training. DOCC provides high-performance computing, advanced networking, high-speed data storage, interactive high-resolution displays and software and services for Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning (AI/ML), data analytics, data simulations, visualization, and virtual-reality requirements. Given how varied modern data-science application requirements can be, DOCC is designed as a configurable, heterogeneous computing environment that prioritizes real-time, interactive, collaborative applications and remote data streaming, but can be scheduled off-hours for large, batch-mode processing. 
DOCC will empower users to work with their data and their colleagues in real-time, test codes, view a &rsquo;window in the oven&rsquo;to watch large simulations run, and simultaneously view results along with related data and ensemble runs on large display walls. DOCC has a visual front end that enables users to easily access familiar collaboration tools, scientific notebooks, AI/ML workflows, and popular visualization software. 
Alternatively, users can add new AI/ML models or create them from scratch. And because DOCC will be connected to the campus research network, data and/or computer codes can be ported to remote computer and cloud resources located on campus, regionally, nationally, or internationally. 
A room-sized instrument, DOCC will be located in the high-trafficked atrium of the new CDRLC, home to the UIC Computer Science Department, part of the College of Engineering, situated across from an auditorium and multi-purpose event space. This location will promote UIC data-science research initiatives and the instrument&rsquo;s collaboration potential. DOCC will also be used to conduct campus research meetings, programs and training initiatives. 
Award Number (FAIN): 2320261 
Period of Performance: 10/01/2023 - 09/30/2026 
Project Title: Research Infrastructure: MRI: Track 2 Acquisition of Data Observation and Computation Collaboratory (DOCC)

EVL Awarded NSF MRI Support to Build the Data Observation and Computation Collaboratory (DOCC)

Carla Gabriela Floricel has been awarded funding by the UI Health Cancer Center to offset the cost of travel and registration to present her cancer-related work at the IEEE VIS 2023 Conference held in Melbourne, Australia October 22-27, 2023. Floricel, a fifth-year Computer Science PhD student and research assistant at EVL. Her advisor is CS Professor and EVL faculty Liz Marai, who is also a Cancer Center member, part of the Cancer Center&rdquo;s Cancer Prevention and Control research program. 
Floricel&rsquo;s research is in visual data science, primarily medical data visualization. Her work is a collaboration with Marai and clinical oncologists from MD Anderson at the University of Texas and data scientists from the University of Iowa. The goal of their work is to better understand symptoms that head and neck cancer patients undergoing radiotherapy are facing during and after cancer treatment. 
Congratulations, Carla!

EVLer Carla Floricel Awarded UI Health Cancer Center <a href="https://cancer.uillinois.edu/fall-travel-award-recipients/">Fall 2023 Travel Award</a>

Roberto Cesar Jr., professor/department head of Computer Science at the University of Sao Paolo and director of eScience Research Center presents his research in computer vision and image processing for urban visualization. Dr. Cesar&rsquo; invited talk will be held: 
EVL&rsquo;s Continuum 
Engineering Research Facility, Room 2068 
Friday, September 29th, noon 
&ldquo;Computer vision and physical models for urban informatics&rdquo; 
Computer vision techniques have played an important role in urban data analysis. Such techniques are useful for capturing and analyzing visual information about cities&rsquo; infrastructure, social manifestations and mobility, to name just a few. However, the adoption of computer vision techniques in urban environments faces important challenges, such as the restricted heterogeneous hardware typically involved, outdoor image variations, and other uncontrolled aspects. In this talk, we present some recent results to overcome these limitations. Specifically, we discuss computer vision techniques for rain scenes, pedestrian mobility analysis, and physical models for urban green regions and graffiti distributions. 
Bio: 
Roberto is a professor at the University of Sao Paulo (USP) since 1998 (BSc in Computer Science - UNESP - 1991; MSc in Electrical Engineering - UNICAMP - 1993; Ph.D. in Physics - USP/Brazil, IPT-UCL/Belgium - 1997). He is currently a full professor in the Department of Computer Science - IME - USP working in the Data Science Research Group. He is currently a special advisor for Physical Sciences and Engineering at the Sao Paulo Research Foundation - FAPESP. He served as the Director of the eScience Research Center at USP and as the head of the Computer Science Department. He was a member of the Image and Vision Computing and the Signal, Image and Video Processing editorial boards, chair and invited speaker of conferences and workshops (Sibgrapi 2003, CIARP 2010, Sibgrapi 2011; SHAPES 2.0 - 2012, eSon - IEEE eScience 2013, IEEE eScience 2014). He has experience in computer science, with an emphasis on computer vision, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. 
<a href="https://www.ime.usp.br/~cesar/">https://www.ime.usp.br/~cesar/</a>

Roberto Cesar Jr. Invited to Present &ldquo;Computer vision and physical models for urban informatics&rdquo;

EVL assistant professor Fabio Miranda&rsquo;s IEEE VIS2023 paper entitled <a href="https://www.evl.uic.edu/pubs/2744">&ldquo;ProWis: A visual approach for building, managing, and analyzing weather simulation ensembles in runtime&rdquo;</a> is recognized among the Best Papers Honorable Mention. A dedicated committee of experienced community members selects <a href="https://ieeevis.org/year/2023/info/awards/best-paper-awards">best paper and honorable mention awards</a> as outstanding work from the pool of accepted papers. 
ProWis is an interactive and provenance-oriented system to help weather experts build, manage, and analyze simulation ensembles at runtime. The system follows a human-in-the-loop approach to enable the exploration of multiple atmospheric variables and weather scenarios.

Overview of the PROWIS components.

&ldquo;ProWis&rdquo; Awarded IEEE VIS2023 Best Paper Honorable Mention

Candidate: Juan Trelles Trabucco 
Committee members: 
- Dr. Liz Marai 
- Dr. Andy Johnson 
- Dr. Wei Tang 
- Dr. Cecilia Arighi (University of Delaware) 
- Dr. Steven Drucker (Microsoft Research) 
Date/time: Aug 24th, 11 am CT 
Location: ERF 3036 and Zoom 
https://uic.zoom.us/j/84392472211?pwd=RTVwQjZaSlVBcERHcUloc1N6THQ0QT09
Meeting ID: 843 9247 2211 Passcode: UA6mfGMR 
Abstract: 
Images in scientific publications communicate essential information, such as experiments performed and results obtained, that researchers can use as a proxy for the publication'&rsquo;s relevance to their research interests. Domains like biocuration, where biomedical experts analyze the literature to extract and organize information for future retrieval and analysis, can benefit from computationally leveraging these images in their workflows. Prior work in biomedical document classification for biocuration has shown that combining features from images (e.g., acquisition modality) with text features can improve precision and recall. However, the considerations and benefits obtained from computationally integrating such image-based features in biocuration workflows are less clear. 
Based on a multi-year collaboration with text-mining researchers and biocurators, this dissertation identifies and tackles several challenges to computationally using image-data in the biocuration process. These challenges include the scarcity of labeled datasets for training image classifiers, the lack of characterization for the needed modality classes in biocuration, the lack of available labeling systems to label extensive collections of images, and the lack of support for image-based features in academic search engines. This dissertation addresses these issues by proposing two taxonomies for image modalities found in biomedical publications; introducing training strategies using shallower neural networks and hierarchical organization of classifiers; describing two labeling systems, one for domain experts and one for model builders who require support for data understanding; and concludes by merging several building blocks into document search systems that successfully leverage image-based data.

PhD Dissertation Announcement: &ldquo;Integrating Image Features to Support the Biocuration Workflow&rdquo;

Starting Academic Year 23/24 visiting professor Zhiling Lan joins as faculty in the Department of Computer Science and EVL. Dr. Lan comes with significant expertise in high-performance computing and parallel/distributed systems. Prior to her tenure at UIC, she was a professor of Computer Science, at the Illinois Institute of Technology between 2002 and 2023. She is also a guest research faculty at Argonne National Laboratory. 
Dr. Lan also heads the <a href="https://spear.lab.uic.edu/">SPEAR (Systems for Performance, Energy, And Resiliency) lab</a>, which conducts research spanning various areas of parallel and distributed systems including cluster management, interconnection networking, performance modeling and simulation, power and energy efficiency, and fault tolerance. SPEAR&rsquo;smission is to unify systems and AI, where we are committed to creating software systems to expedite AI applications and exploring advanced AI technologies to tackle critical research challenges in computer systems.

EVL Welcomes Professor Zhiling Lan to High Performance Computing Faculty Team

Assistant Professor Sidhart Kumar joins the Computer Science and EVL faculty with expertise in High-Performance Computing.  Kumar&rsquo;s research goal is to provide a comprehensive framework for high-performance data management, critical in extracting meaningful insights from large and complex computational systems. More broadly his interest is in developing scalable algorithms and data structures that can inject interactivity and performance into data- and compute-intensive applications. Kumar's overall research relies on the effective use of techniques from a variety of domains including databases, topology, visualization, and machine learning.

Sidharth Kumar Joins EVL Affiliated Faculty - Assistant Professor, Computer Science

The 2023-2024 University Scholar Program has selected EVL professor G. Elisabeta Marai among its awarded and honored candidates. Dr. Marai is among two other designees within the College of Engineering - Professor Natasha Devroye with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, and Professor Karl Rockne with Civil, Materials, and Environmental Engineering. Sponsored by the Office of the President, the program rewards outstanding faculty who have been recognized for their superior performance in research, teaching, and scholarly activities. 
Join us in congratulating professor Liz! 
<a href="https://emails.uofi.uic.edu/newsletter/25/464513625.html">See the full article.</a>

EVL Professor G. Elisabeta Marai Awarded 2023-2024 University Scholar

EVL professor Mike Papka and his research students have been awarded an Honorable Mention in the EuroVis Best Paper Category for &ldquo;ChemoGraph: Interactive Visual Exploration of the Chemical Space&rdquo;. Co-authored by collaborators Bharat Kale, Austin Clyde, Maoyuan Sun, Arvind Ramanathan, Rick Stevens, and Michael E. Papka, ChemoGraph is a novel visual analytics technique for interactively exploring related chemicals. A chemical space is formalized as a hypergraph with novel machine-learning models to compute related chemical compounds applied. It uses a database to find related compounds from an available space and a machine learning model to generate new ones, which helps enlarge the known space. Moreover, ChemoGraph highlights interactive features that support users in viewing, comparing, and organizing computationally identified related chemicals. 
<a href="https://youtu.be/kVpz6TDjQMw ">See a video teaser on EVLTube.</a>

&ldquo;ChemoGraph: Interactive Visual Exploration of the Chemical Space&rdquo; Awarded with Honorable Mention in the EuroVis Best Paper Category

The annual &ldquo;SAGE3: Smart Amplified Group Environment for Harnessing the Data Revolution&rdquo; all hands meeting was held this year at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, in Oahu, Hawaii, June 26 - 30 2023. UIC&rsquo; PI Andrew Johnson, CoPI Luc Renambot, and senior research staff member Lance Long attended the meeting with collaborators from Virginia Tech and the University of Hawaii to discuss the future of the project, achieved milestones, and current challenges. These face-to-face meetings have proven critical to the advancement of the overall project objectives, as developers are able to exchange success stories and lessons learned from their collaborative work. The intensive brainstorming has helped crystalize future directions and potential project expansion. 
Funded by NSF, SAGE3 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. The project is scheduled to conclude in 2025.

SAGE3 2023 All Hands Meeting

EVL hosted ChicagoCHI&rsquo;s June presentation &rlquo;Making Design Sense of Hearing&rdquo;, June 22, 2023. Guest Speaker Greg Olsen, Portfolio Scientist Lead in the GN Advanced Science group presented his research augmented hearing, along with design insights and considerations from compensating for age-related hearing loss to enhancing one of the 5 senses beyond the current human capability. The event was organized by EVL alumn and ChicagoCHI chair Victor Mateevisti. 
<a href="https://www.chicagochi.org/2023/06/02/making-design-sense-of-hearing/">For more information.</a>

EVL Hosts ChicagoCHI Presentation

Ph.D. Student: Ashwini G. Naik 
Committee Members: 
Dr. Nikita Soni 
Dr. Debaleena Chattopadhyay 
Dr. Steve Jones (External Member) 
Dr. Robert Kenyon (Co-Advisor) 
Dr. Andrew Johnson (Advisor and Chair) 
Date and Time: May 23, 2023, 9 AM-11 AM Chicago Time 
Location: ERF 2068 
Zoom Link: <a href="https://uic.zoom.us/j/7898336493">https://uic.zoom.us/j/7898336493</a> 
Abstract: 
Strategizing and sensemaking in immersive environments have predominantly been explored for training, learning, and recreational tasks. The ability to embed these concepts into the data analysis pipeline is recently emerging and has seen limited research. In our work, we present Personal Situated Analytics (PSA) that provides individuals the ability to embed themselves in recorded events in multiple degrees of immersion on the Reality-Virtuality spectrum, evaluate the benefits, and study their exploration patterns. With the increasing availability of sensors and capturing devices, we can now actively record and leverage data from our daily activities to gain valuable insights and make informed decisions. PSA at its core formulates a combination of embodied cognition, situated analytics, and conversation analysis while exploiting the benefits of strategic immersion and sensemaking in immersive environments. To that end, we first developed a framework for embedding the individuals in the environment where the conversation originally occurred. Secondly, we conducted a pilot user study (n=12, protocol #STUDY2023-0018), to compare user experiences while exploring recorded conversations in Mixed Reality through the HoloLens2 device, and in Virtual Reality through the Quest2 device. Our proposed framework encompasses various stages such as tracking, data capturing, data cleaning, data synchronization, prototype building, and deploying the final product to end-user hardware. In the first part of the experiment, we used datasets consisting of seated participants (protocol #2022-0354). In the future, we will record and analyze datasets with standing and non-stationary participants (protocol #STUDY2023-0509) in two settings that would employ various collaboration profiles among the participants. Drawing from our experience during the preliminary user study and the feedback we received from the participants, we catalog our lessons learned and insights which can potentially drive advancements in embodied situated analytics and thereby enhance the conversation analysis pipeline.

PSA is an immersive MR/VR framework for experiencing and analyzing recorded conversations and events. We see two participants represented as virtual avatars engaged in a conversation.

PhD Prelim Announcement: Improving Conversation Analysis Pipeline through Personal Situated Analytics in Extended Reality

EVl Professor Liz Marai&rsquo;s research in visual analytics and visualization, along with her advisees has been cited in the book &ldquo;Visualization, Visual Analytics and Virtual Reality in Medicine&rdquo; published by Elsevier and authored by Bernhard Preim, Renata Raidou, Noeska Smit, Kai Lawonn. In Chapter 11 - ﻿﻿﻿Visual analytics in clinical medicine and Visual analytics for prediction Marai&rsquo;s and EVLers Andrew Wentzel, Peter Hanula, Carla Floricel, Nafiul Nipu visualization applications T-SSIM and THALIS are featured. 
&ldquo;Visualization, Visual Analytics and Virtual Reality in Medicine: State-of-the-art Techniques and Applications describes important techniques and applications that show an understanding of actual user needs as well as technological possibilities. The book includes user research, for example, task and requirement analysis, visualization design and algorithmic ideas without going into the details of implementation. This reference will be suitable for researchers and students in visualization and visual analytics in medicine and healthcare, medical image analysis scientists and biomedical engineers in general. 
Visualization and visual analytics have become prevalent in public health and clinical medicine, medical flow visualization, multimodal medical visualization and virtual reality in medical education and rehabilitation. Relevant applications now include digital pathology, virtual anatomy and computer-assisted radiation treatment planning.&rdquo; 
<a href="https://shop.elsevier.com/books/visualization-visual-analytics-and-virtual-reality-in-medicine/preim/978-0-12-822962-0">Purchase a copy of the book.</a>

Cohort-based radiation therapy prediction using T-SSIM, where a stylized 3D view of the predicted radiation plan of the current patient is used.  Additional RT views show the most similar patients who contribute to the prediction.

EVL Professor G. Elisabeta Marai&rsquo;s Research and Students&rsquo; Work Cited in &ldquo;Visualization, Visual Analytics and Virtual Reality in Medicine&rdquo;

Master of Design graduate student Quentin Bu presents her virtual reality performance piece &ldquo;An Elegy for the Departed - an Interactive Virtual Reality+Physical Computing Typographic Performance&rdquo; in EVL&rsquo;s CAVE2. 
Friday, May 5, 2023 
11:15 - 11:45 AM 
Room 2036 ERF 
Elegy is a highly experimental virtual reality work, merging the artist&rsquo;s original poetry and audio composition, graphic design, 3D typography and physical computing activated through participant movement and gestures. In the artist&rsquo;s own words &ldquo;The Elegy is my poetic, perhaps futile attempt to consolidate and immortalize the transitory states of life.&rdquo;

Elegy in EVL&rsquo;s CAVE2

MDES Thesis Presentation &ldquo;The Elegy&rdquo;

EVL alumna and Associate Professor in Interactive Systems at the Department of Informatics & Telecommunications, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Maria Roussou presents her research in immersive eXtended Reality (XR): 
Wednesday, May 3, 2023, 1:30PM 
EVL Continuum Room 2068 ERF 
Dr. Roussou&rsquo;s talk entitled &ldquo:Extending the virtual: the museum as a hybrid experience&rdquo; will discuss the use of advanced digital technologies, such as Virtual Reality, in the GLAM sector (e.g., galleries, libraries, archives, museums, etc.) to create immersive experiences for visitors has come of age. However, to date, the emphasis has been on reconstructing the real to transgress the built environment's limitations. Nowadays, the focus turns to integrating the physical and the virtual. The physical space is highlighted, complemented, and expanded through close coupling with the digital. Tangible objects are integrated and play a leading role in the digital experiences of visitors, creating a hybrid reality. Drawing from a range of high-end immersive eXtended Reality (XR) applications but also lower-end mobile tours created for cultural or informal educational purposes, this talk will explore how the future’s hybrid nature is shifting immersive presentation from the mainly didactic walkthroughs to experiences that are playful, emotive, social and shared, meaningfully interactive, and, ultimately, relevant and resonant to those they are designed for. 
Specifically, Roussou will present aspects of the BRIDGES project, a multi-user, multisensory XR experience set in informal learning contexts, and the EMOTIVE project, which aims to leverage interactive, social, and participatory capabilities. Both combine historical accuracy in representation with dramatic storytelling to enhance knowledge about the past, historical empathy, and resonance. 
--- 
The <a href="https://www.bridges-horizon.eu">BRIDGES project</a> and the <a href="https://www.emotiveproject.eu/">EMOTIVE project</a> have received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program. 
Bio: 
Maria Roussou is an Associate Professor in Interactive Systems at the Department of Informatics & Telecommunications, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. In 2003 she founded and co-directed <a href="http://www.makebelieve.gr/mroussou
">makebelieve</a>, an experience design and consulting company. Previously, she established (in 1998) and directed (until 2003) the Virtual Reality Department at the Foundation of the Hellenic World, where she was responsible for setting up the immersive projection-based VR exhibits and managing the research, design and development of the VR programs and related visitor experiences. She holds a PhD in Computer Science (VR/HCI) from the University of London (UCL), a Master in Fine Arts (MFA) degree in Electronic Visualization from the School of Art and Design, University of Illinois at Chicago, a Master of Science (M.Sc) in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science from the same university, and an undergraduate degree in Applied Informatics from the Athens University of Economics and Business. Maria is a Senior Member of the ACM, and Vice-chair of the Greek ACM SIGCHI Chapter and the Greek ACM-W Chapter.

Extending the virtual: the museum as a hybrid experience

Standing in front of Argonne National Laboratory&rsquo;s Aurora supercomputer, EVL and computer science department professor
Michael E. Papka is the Featured Photo of the Spring 2023 RISE publication. Papka holds a joint appointment with UIC and is also Deputy Associate Laboratory Director, Computing, Environment, and Life Sciences, Argonne National Laboratory. Among his charge is the new Aurora supercomputer, which once fully online, will be among the United States&rsquo; most powerful exascale machines used for research. Sponsored by the Department of Energy and designed by Intel and Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Aurora will provide scientists a new and extremely powerful tool for a host of research initiatives. 
<a href="https://engineering.uic.edu/about/coe-news/rise/rise-spring-2023/">See the RISE: Spring 2023 feature</a>.

EVL Professor Papka is the Featured Photo in UIC Engineering&rsquo;s RISE 2023

EVL graduate student Hal Brynteson in collaboration with Dr. Parisa Mirbod and PhD student Abbas Moradi Bilondi (Mechanical and Industrial Engineering) has been awarded an honorable mention for this year's <a href="https://grad.uic.edu/funding-awards/the-image-of-research/">Image of Research Competition</a>. The Image of Research is an annual interdisciplinary exhibit competition organized by the Graduate College and University Library to showcase the breadth and diversity of research at UIC. 
Brynteson&rsquo;s visualization was created using Blender/ParaView, and represents The Rayleigh Bénard convection. As Bilondi explains, &ldquo;The Rayleigh Bénard convection, where a fluid is heated from below and cooled from above, is an important mechanism of mass and heat transfer in nature and in numerous industrial applications. One can cite geophysics, astrophysics, meteorology, heat exchangers, multilayer walls in buildings, and cooling of electronic components for example. In the present work, by considering bubbles inside the fluid flow, we aim to investigate the effects of the presence of bubbles on the heat transfer rate.&rdquo; 
A celebration of the 2023 Image of Research awardees on Friday, April 28, at 3 p.m., in the Richard J. Daley Library, 801 S. Morgan St., Chicago, IL 60607.

The Rayleigh Bénard Convection

EVL Graduate Student Awarded with 2023 UIC Image of Research Honorable Mention

EVL-affiliated faculty and Computer Science Assistant Professor Nikita Soni&rsquo;s research in human-computer interaction (HCI), along with three other researchers working in this area: Assistant Professor Debaleena Chattopadhyay, Professor Andruid Kerne, and Assistant Professor Joseph E. Michaelis is featured in the Spring 2023 issue of UIC Engineering RISE.
Soni&rsquo;s research focuses on user interface design honed for teaching and learning in support of greater creativity allowing users to interact using natural input methods such as touch and speech. Her work includes multi-touch spherical displays for Earth Science education in museums and classrooms. Her multi-touch spherical display uses familiar smartphone-like gestures for interaction with earth science and climate data displayed on a globe. In addition to working on user interfaces for novel display technologies, Soni also creates mobile interfaces for creative uses, such as photographic editing. 
<a href="https://engineering.uic.edu/about/coe-news/rise/rise-spring-2023/putting-humans-first-in-computer-design/">Read the full article &ldquo;Putting humans first in computer design&rdquo; featuring HCI research at UIC.</a>

Nikita Soni with Spherical Display

EVL Affiliate Faculty Nikita Soni Featured in UIC Engineering RISE Spring 2023 Issue

Candidate: Arthur Nishimoto 
Committee: 
Andrew Johnson, Chair and Advisor 
Debaleena Chattopadhyay 
Steve Jones 
Wei Tang 
Jason Leigh (University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa) 
Date: Thursday, April 20, 2023 
Time: 4-5 PM 
Location: EVL Continuum, Room 2068 ERF 
Abstract: 
Given the adoption of many variations of virtual and augmented reality devices such as CAVE/CAVE2, large virtual reality (VR) capable displays walls/domes, and a growing set of increasingly capable and affordable head mounted displays (HMD) in both commercial and industrial applications, it has become apparent that not one platform will be appropriate for every use case scenario. HMDs are becoming increasingly more lightweight and powerful, but in collaborative settings there always will be a need for a shared display or environment to bring discussions together. 
The goal of this dissertation is to leverage the best of current augmented reality (AR) head mounted display technologies: 360 degree field of regard visuals, rendering of graphics over the real world, and personalized views with the best of large display wall environments: high resolution and contrast, shared visual environment, and more accurate tracking. 
A collaborative user study was conducted to evaluate how two participants wearing AR HMDs (HoloLens 1 and 2) in CAVE2 work with each other and the combination of visuals on the CAVE2 shared display and the AR HMD in completing a building network wiring task in 3D spatial AR.

PhD Dissertation Announcement: &ldquo;Collaborative Augmented Reality for Virtual Reality Display Wall Environments&rdquo;

&ldquo;Hummingbird&rdquo; is coming to the Chicago Children&rsquo;s Theater March 24-26th. Written by Jo Catell and developed by Daria Tsoupikova, Sai Priya Jyothula, Andrew Johnson, Arthur Nishimoto and Lance Long at EVL, this experience is described as collaborative Virtual Reality (VR) for tele-Immersive interactive theater. &ldquo;Hummingbird&rdquo; performances provide the opportunity for people to experience the show in two different ways: as a VR participant wearing a head-mounted display and interacting with the environment, or as an observer watching participants perform! 
A gutsy teen has to outsmart her mother&rsquo;s narcissistic boss and survive dangerous new technology in hummingbird: a live, immersive adventure that transforms theatrical storytelling utilizing cutting-edge, virtual reality technology1 
Free Performances: Fri 3/24 @ 6:30pm, Sat 3/25 @ 2:30pm & 4pm, Sun 3/26 @ 2:30pm & 4pm 
Recommended For Ages 10 & Up 
Run Time:50 minutes 
See the Chicago Children&rsquo;s Theater <a href="https://chicagochildrenstheatre.org/event/hummingbird/">web posting</a> for more information. 
&ldquo;Hummingbird&rdquo; performances are made possible with the support from the National Endowment for the Arts grant for art projects, Illinois Arts Council, Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), and the University of Illinois Presidential Initiative to Celebrate the Impact of the Arts. 
See <a href="https://hummingbirdvr.com/"> https://hummingbirdvr.com/</a>

&ldquo;Hummingbird&rdquo; Performances Scheduled at the Chicago Children&rsquo;s Theater

The First Environmental Justice Workshop, entitled &ldquo;Generating a Discussion Between Communities and Industries: Data Collection, Analytics, Policy, and Tools&rdquo; was held at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory's Continuum environment on March 15, 2023. In many cities across the United States, many communities are located close to an excessive number of environmentally polluting industrial facilities. From an environmental justice viewpoint, the fact that the environmental burden is not shared across all populations living in a city is unfair. The aim of the environmental justice workshop is to bring together different stakeholders such as industries and southwest Chicago communities to get their perspective, identify and discuss pressing environmental justice challenges across Chicago, share current work across disciplines, and brainstorm solutions. 
Among topics for discussion were posing questions to participants such as - What are the fundamental concepts of environmental justice? How do environmental issues disproportionately impact certain communities? What environmental injustices exist in different communities? Are there any organizations working to create awareness about environmental justice? How can we use interactive visualization to access environmental justice issues? 
Workshop organizers include: 
Apostolis Sambanis, Health Policy and Administration, University of Illinois, Chicago 
Fabio Miranda, Computer Science, University of Illinois, Chicago 
Federica Fusi, Urban Planning and Public Affairs, University of Illinois, Chicago 
Marisol Becerra, Urban Planning and Public Affairs, University of Illinois, Chicago 
Michael Cailas, Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, University of Illinois, Chicago 
Michael D Siciliano, Public Policy, Management, and Analytics, University of Illinois, Chicago 
Phillip A. Boda, Special Education, University of Illinois, Chicago 
Sanjana Srabanti, Computer Science, University of Illinois, Chicago 
Sybil Derrible, Civil, Materials, and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois, Chicago

The First Environmental Justice Workshop Held at EVL

&ldquo;Where the sidewalk ends&rdquo; in <a href="https://news.mit.edu/2023/open-source-tool-mapping-sidewalks-0315">MIT News</a> discusses how Miranda along with researchers from MIT, University of Sao Paulo, and New York University have built an open-source tool that uses aerial imagery and image-recognition to create complete maps of sidewalks and crosswalks. The tool, called TILE2NET can help planners, policymakers, and urbanists who want to expand pedestrian infrastructure. 
The research team used computerized image-recognition techniques to build a tool that will visually recognize sidewalks, crosswalks, and footpaths. To do that, the researchers first used 20,000 aerial images from Boston, Cambridge, New York City, and Washington - places where comprehensive pedestrian maps already existed. By training the image-recognition model on such clearly defined objects and using portions of those cities as a starting point, they were able to see how well TILE2NET would work elsewhere in those cities. 
<a href="https://news.mit.edu/2023/open-source-tool-mapping-sidewalks-0315">Read the full MIT News article.</a> 
For additional information regarding this research see the Computers, Environment and Urban Systems publication <a href="https://www2.evl.uic.edu/entry.php?id=2703">&ldquo;Mapping the walk: A scalable computer vision approach for generating sidewalk network datasets from aerial imagery&rdquo;</a>.

Boston Commons: a) Aerial image, b) Detected sidewalk and footpath polygons (in orange) and detected crosswalks (in red), c) Fitted sidewalk, crosswalk, and footpath centerlines superimposed on the aerial image.

EVL Faculty Member Fabio Miranda&rsquo;s TILE2NET Collaborative Research Featured in MIT News

Three UIC faculty members, including Professor Daria Tsoupikova and Assistant Professor Fabio Miranda from UIC&rsquo;s Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), and the School of Design&rsquo;s Professor Sharon Oiga, can see their work on display nightly, as part of a larger-than-life public art installation downtown - <a href="https://artonthemart.com/chicago-design-through-the-decades/">Art on theMART</a>. 
The display referred to as Chicago Design Through the Decades is a journey through the last hundred years of the history of Chicago design and is based on the collection of the <a href="https://chicagodesignarchive.org/">Chicago Design Archive (CDA)</a>, a permanent online record of design in the city. The historical imagery is assembled using machine learning algorithms provided by Miranda, which is a tribute to Chicago as the home of neural networks. The final imagery is projected across the Chicago River onto the Merchandise Mart for a spectacular digital art experience. The display runs through December 30th nightly at 7:30 p.m. and 8 p.m. 
Stay tuned for the possibility of student collaboration on another Art on theMART display or similar public digital art project given the new undergraduate <a href="https://cs.uic.edu/undergraduate/cs-and-design/">CS + Design</a> major, which debuted Fall 2022. UIC is the only public university that currently offers this degree, and prospects are bright for students to participate in innovative digital art projects such as Chicago Design Through the Decades in the future. 
<a href="https://cs.uic.edu/news-stories/larger-than-life-cs-faculty-participate-in-public-art-project-in-downtown-chicago/">Read Andrea Poet&rsquo;s full article</a>.

UIC CS News Features &ldquo;Larger than life: CS faculty participate in public art project in downtown Chicago&rdquo;

PhD Student: Sai Priya Jyothula 
Committee: 
Dr. Andrew Johnson, Advisor and Chair 
Dr. Steve Jones 
Dr. Debaleena Chattopadhyay 
Dr. Joseph Michaelis 
Dr. Venugopal Vasudevan (Procter and Gamble) 
Location: 2068 ERF 
Date and time: Monday, December 12, 10 AM - 11:30 AM CST 
Zoom link: <a href="https://uic.zoom.us/j/87006131464?pwd=c1MxVmIvc1VTSW9RU2xYdFZOTUl1Zz09
">https://uic.zoom.us/j/87006131464?pwd=c1MxVmIvc1VTSW9RU2xYdFZOTUl1Zz09</a> 
Abstract: 
Collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) are shared virtual spaces that bring users together and allow them to interact with each other and virtual objects. In asymmetric CVEs, users have varied roles, interaction capabilities, perspectives, and device configurations, which can be leveraged to further user objectives. The major objective of my research is to use these asymmetric virtual environments as a means to augment people and enable them to transcend their physical, sensory and cognitive limitations. Specifically, I focus on facilitating rehabilitation training for the body and accessing deeper metaphors of the mind. The research work outlined in this document is divided into two sections. In the first section, I discuss the design and implementation of asymmetrical virtual environments that I developed for patient rehabilitation in collaboration with ShirleyRyan AbilityLab, Chicago. Then, I present the iterative improvements that I made to the environments based on the feedback from the physical therapists and propose a user study to evaluate the systems. Understanding the usage context helps to design guidelines for future systems that not only focus on the efficiency of the system individually but also consider how the system augments human capabilities. In the second section, I discuss the research techniques that map the mental models and elicit unconscious latent thoughts, such as photo-elicitation and Zaltman&rsquo;s Metaphor Elicitation Technique. Next, I explain the implementation of an exploratory study I performed to evaluate the effectiveness of utilizing asymmetrical virtual environments to augment metaphor elicitation. Finally, I analyze the results and challenges that I encountered during the pilot study and propose future research to improve the prototype system and the metaphor elicitation process.

PhD Prelim Announcement: Supporting Motor-Rehabilitation and Metaphor Elicitation in Asymmetric Virtual Environments

Computer Science assistant professor and EVL affiliated faculty Nikita Soni showcases her research and the newly installed interactive spherical display housed in EVL on Friday, November 2, 2022, 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm, Room 2036 ERF. The display purchased from Pufferfish, Ltd. is currently being used for a UIUC-subaward / NASA-funded project investigating how touchscreen interactions enable deep learning experiences, particularly in Earth Science classrooms. 
Please join us in celebrating and demonstrating this exciting new device and innovative interactive applications!

Data visualization application running on the multi-touch spherical display developed by Pufferfish.Ltd.

Interactive Spherical Display Open House at EVL

Guadalupe Canahuate, Associate Professor from The University of Iowa presents an EVL colloquium Wednesday, November 30, 2022, Room 2068 ERF (Continuum). 
<strongLAbstract: The concept of similarity is used as the basis for many data exploration and data mining tasks. Nearest neighbor (NN) queries identify the most similar items, or in terms of distance the closest points to a query point. Similarity is traditionally characterized using a distance function between multi-dimensional feature vectors. However, when the data is high-dimensional, traditional distance functions fail to significantly distinguish between the closest and furthest points, as few dissimilar dimensions dominate the distance function. Localized similarity functions, i.e. functions that only consider dimensions close to the query, quantize each dimension independently and only compute similarity for the dimensions where the query and the points fall into the same bin. These quantizations are query-agnostic and there is potential to improve accuracy when a query-dependent quantization is used. In this work we propose a query dependent dynamic quantization method for high-dimensional similarity searches that does not only improve the quality of the distance metric, but also improves query time performance by filtering out non relevant data. We propose a distributed indexing and query algorithm to efficiently compute this novel quantization and evaluate the scalability of the approach in relation to the number of dimensions, and the number of compute nodes. 
Bio: Guadalupe Canahuate is an Associate Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Iowa. Her research interests include machine learning, large scale data management, data compression and indexing, and big-data. indexing, and big-data. Dr. Canahuate obtained her Ph.D degree from the Computer Science and Engineering department at The Ohio State University in 2009; and her M.Sc. Degree from the Computer and Information Science department in 2004. Her work includes precision medicine approaches for outcome risk modeling of radiotherapy oncologic patients, distributed indexing and query optimization, high-dimensional data analysis, and semantic-based searches. Before joining academia, Dr. Canahuate worked as a software developer and a certified database administrator in her home country Dominican Republic.

Scalable high-dimensional similarity searches using a query driven dynamic quantization

Art on theMART&rsquo;s newest projection, Chicago Design Through the Decades, which debuted November 18 and can be viewed nightly through December 30, isn&rsquo;t the work of a single artist but a century-spanning celebration-slash-compendium of Chicago design, beginning with the city&rsquo;s art deco heyday in the 1920s and ending in contemporary digital portraiture produced using neural networks, a subset of deep learning technology with roots at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) and the University of Chicago. 
Chicago Design Through the Decades is a cross-institutional collaborative effort led by Daria Tsoupikova, UIC School of Design professor and EVL faculty; Sharon Oiga, UIC School of Design professor; and Guy Villa, Jr., Columbia College Chicago assistant professor. Additional contributors to the project are CDA directors Jack Weiss, Cheri McIntyre, and Lauren Meranda, along with NASA science animator Krystofer Kim, and the EVL&rsquo;s Fabio Miranda.
The projection is based on the 3,250-work collection of the <a href="https://chicagodesignarchive.org/">Chicago Design Archive (CDA)</a> and is on view nightly through December 30 at 7:30 and 8:00 p.m. 
Read the full article <a href="https://www.archpaper.com/2022/11/century-chicago-design-history-art-deco-facade-merchandise-mart/">&ldquo;A century of Chicago design history comes to life on the sprawling art deco facade of the iconic Merchandise Mart&rdquo;</a> by Matt Hickman. 
See the <a href="https://designobserver.com/">Design Observer</a> December posting.

The Architect&rsquo;s Newspaper and The Design Observer Feature A Century of Chicago Design History

&ldquo;Chicago Design Through the Decades&rdquo; by UIC Design and EVL Professor Daria Tsoupikova, Sharon Oiga, and Guy Villa Jr. will be on view at Art of theMart: 
Friday, November 18 - Friday, December 30, 7:30 & 8:00 p.m. 
Best viewed on The Chicago Riverwalk between Wells and Lake Streets. 
<a href="https://artonthemart.com/programming/">Art on theMART</a> is the largest permanent digital art projection in the world, projecting contemporary artwork across the 2.5 acre river-façade of theMART. Art on theMART provides a public platform for moving image work by renowned local, national and international multi-disciplinary artists. The program is the result of a 30-year commitment by theMART owner Vornado Realty Trust, in close collaboration with the City of Chicago, with the shared goal to provide public access to innovative contemporary artwork for the thousands of visitors traversing the Chicago Riverwalk each day. 
Join us in celebrating the work of our colleagues and collaborators for the exhibition opening Friday, November 18th at 7:30 p.m.!

Art on theMART Opening Invitation

November 18th Opening of &ldquo;Chicago Design Through the Decades&rdquo; on the Art on theMART

SAGE3 beta version software and documentation will be introduced next week at the IEEE/ACM Supercomputing (SC22) conference in Dallas, Texas, USA, November 13-18, 2022. The SAGE User Community is invited to attend the SC22 Birds of a Feather (BOF) meeting and participate in ongoing SAGE3 demonstrations in the SC22 Exhibition. 
Attend the &ldquo;SAGE 12th SC BOF: Smart Amplified Group Environment Enhanced with Artificial Intelligence for Global Collaboration&rdquo;: 
 * Tuesday, November 15, 2022 
 *12:15PM - 01:15PM CST 
 * Room: D168, Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center Dallas 
 * <a href="https://sc22.supercomputing.org/presentation/?id=bof141&sess=sess312">https://sc22.supercomputing.org/presentation/?id=bof141&sess=sess312</a> 
Join us for SAGE3 demonstrations in the StarLight research booth # 2847 on the exhibition floor, Tuesday-Thursday. 
SAGE3, the Smart Amplified Group Environment, is the next-generation, &ldquo;human-in-the-loop&rdquo; collaboration platform, providing HPC users with the tools to access, explore, discover, publish, share, integrate, and reuse complex datasets. SAGE3 supports today&rsquo;s hybrid work/home environments (laptops, single monitors and display walls), and interfaces with a variety of computational infrastructures, workflows, notebooks, and analytics software through Artificial Intelligence-enabled services and orchestration services. It lowers the barrier of entry into AI for non-expert users, democratizing access to disruptive technologies for those with varying skills. 
The BOF will not be streamed. SAGE3 software and documentation will be available for download on the SAGE3 website. The SAGE3 team plans to hold SAGE3 educational webinars, starting next year. 
REMINDER: SAGE3 / SAGE2 COMMUNITY USER FORUMS are now hosted on Slack. To join, go to the <a href="https://sage3.sagecommons.org/">SAGE3 website</a> and click on the Support menu. 
 * For SAGE3, subscribe to the sage3-support channel. 
 * For SAGE2, subscribe to the sage2-support channel. 
Thank you for your longstanding support of SAGE and we look forward to continued collaborations. 
Maxine Brown 
SAGE team member 
<a href="mailto:maxine@uic.edu">maxine@uic.edu</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.

INTRODUCING SAGE3 at the SC22 - Tuesday, November 15, 12:15pm - 1:15pm

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded a $2.6 million grant to lead institution Northern Illinois University and sub-recipient the University of Illinois Chicago for classroom training and research opportunities in computational high energy physics. 
EVL faculty and Computer Science professor Mike Papka, and EVL director of research, professor Andy Johnson will lead the computational and high-performance computing aspect of this project. They will collaborate with UIC Physics professor Richard Cavanaugh to mentor students in computational high-energy physics education. 
The 5-year award will provide two dozen master&rsquo;s-level students in physics and computer science stipends, tuition reimbursement, and distinctive research experiences in the HEP domain. 
Dr. Cavanaugh specializes in Particle Physics and holds a joint appointment with Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FermiLab). As the Deputy Associate Laboratory Director, Computing, Environment, and Life Sciences at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Dr. Papka has unprecedented experience in high-performance computing. They will provide students a unique opportunity to collaborate with scientists at the DOE&rsquo;s ANL and FermiLab. 
See the full announcement in the <a href="https://newsroom.niu.edu/2-6m-doe-award-will-support-training-in-computational-high-energy-physics/">Northern Illinois University Newsroom</a>.

DOE Awards NIU and UIC Funds to Support Training in Computational High Energy Physics

NOVEMBER 14-17, 2022 -- SAGE3 Team members announced the release of the SAGE3 alpha version at the IEEE/ACM Supercomputing 2022 (SC22) conference, held at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas, Texas, USA, November 14-18, 2022. Software and documentation are available on the SAGE3 website: 
<a href="https://sage3.sagecommons.org/">https://sage3.sagecommons.org/</a> 
The Team conducted ongoing SAGE3 demonstrations in the SC22 Exhibition and held its 12th SC Birds of a Feather (BOF) meeting to introduce current and potential users to SAGE3 features. You can learn about our SC22 activities and link to the BOF presentation, videos and photographs from the SAGE3 NEWS website: 
<a href="https://sage3.sagecommons.org/?p=807#more-807">https://sage3.sagecommons.org/?p=807#more-807</a> 
Note: Several long-time users have asked when server and client code will be released. The SAGE3 roadmap (see BOF presentation) targets February 1, 2023 for the SAGE3 Server release and March 1, 2023 for source code release. More information will be forthcoming. 
We hope you enjoy using SAGE3! Your feedback is always welcomed. 
REMINDER: SAGE3 / SAGE2 COMMUNITY USER FORUMS are now hosted on Slack. To join, go to the SAGE3 website and click on the Support menu. 
 * For SAGE3, subscribe to the sage3-support channel. 
 * For SAGE2, subscribe to the sage2-support channel. 
Maxine Brown 
SAGE team member 
<a href="mailto:maxine@uic.edu">maxine@uic.edu</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.

SAGE3&trade; Alpha Release Announced at SC22

UIC Department of Computer Science 
Doctoral Admissions Webinar 
November 2nd 2022 @7 am-8:30am Chicago time (CDT) 
Webinar: <a href="https://tinyurl.com/uicwebinar2022">https://tinyurl.com/uicwebinar2022</a> 
See what the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois Chicago has to offer! Located in the beautiful city of Chicago, UIC is among the most culturally diverse universities in the United States, and home to one of the most innovative computer science departments in the United States. UIC is Chicago&rsquo;s top public research university, and was recently ranked in the top 20 of the best 100 universities worldwide that are under 50 years of age. Doctoral students in their first five years of enrollment are guaranteed a fully funded appointment that includes a tuition waiver, and a stipend. Students are also eligible for summer support. Our students get jobs in academia, industry, and entertainment upon graduation, including positions at top research labs and companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Disney, and Amazon. 
During this webinar, UIC Computer Science faculty will talk about our research agenda, application fee waivers, the application process, application expectations in terms of GPA/GRE etc, and will take questions. A recording of the webinar will be made available on our Graduate Admissions page. 
Apply: <a href="https://cs.uic.edu/graduate/admissions/">https://cs.uic.edu/graduate/admissions/</a> 
Deadline: December 15th 2022 
See our flyer at: <a href="https://tinyurl.com/uic2022flyer">https://tinyurl.com/uic2022flyer</a> 
 <iframe width="420" height="315"src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eNoBbCm1skM">
</iframe>

Interested in pursuing a PhD in Computer Science in the United States?

AI competency will be an essential workforce skill. A group of computer scientists and learning science experts are considering what a foundational introduction to AI might look like for middle school and high school students. EVL affiliated faculty, Michael E. Papka, professor of computer science at UIC and deputy associate laboratory director and supercomputing facility director at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, along with a like-minded group of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) educators, and computer scientists are researching the gap in future workforce skills in addressing AI problems. They began to brainstorm about a new tool, or perhaps a teaching module, that would introduce AI concepts to the young researchers of tomorrow. 
&ldquo;AI research is making major strides,&rdquo; said Papka. &ldquo;We are seeing progress in many areas of AI, made not only by new techniques, but especially by new hardware for running computationally intensive AI models.&rdquo; 
Read Laura Wolf&rsquo;s featured article <a href="https://www.anl.gov/article/science-beyond-siri-a-team-of-educators-and-computer-scientists-take-on-ai">Science beyond Siri: A team of educators and computer scientists take on AI</a> in the Argonne National Laboratory news.

Argonne National Laboratory and Northern Illinois University collaborated to host a camp that introduced middle school and high school students to artificial intelligence.

Science beyond Siri: A team of educators and computer scientists take on AI

UIC <a href="https://cs.uic.edu/undergraduate/cs-and-design/">Engineering&rsquo;s News</a> promotes the new and very popular computer science + design undergraduate degree. UIC is the only public university offering this interdisciplinary degree, which addresses the growing trend and demand for creative technologists in the job market. The CSX program, as the computer science + design degree is also known will teach topics from augmented and virtual reality to 3D fabrication. 
To see more of the Engineering&rsquo; newsletter and activities featured as the Dean&rsquo;s list see: 
<a href="https://emails.uofi.uic.edu/newsletter/669921009.html">https://emails.uofi.uic.edu/newsletter/669921009.html</a>

Computer Science + Design Major

The SAGE3 Team has been quiet far too long, but we&rsquo;ve been very busy! Here&rsquo;s what to look forward to in the coming months: 
* SAGE3 beta version software with documentation will be released the week of the IEEE/ACM Supercomputing (SC22) conference, to be held in Dallas, Texas, USA, November 13-18, 2022. More information about the release will be forthcoming. For information on SC22, see: <a href="https://sc22.supercomputing.org/">https://sc22.supercomputing.org/</a> 
* A 1-hour SAGE3 Birds of a Feather (BoF) session and ongoing demonstrations and presentations will take place during SC22. At the BoF (Tuesday, Nov 15 from 12:15-13:15 in Room D168), the SAGE3 team will introduce the latest software release. The team will also share a booth in the research exhibition (StarLight booth #2847 as well as partner booths) and will conduct demos and presentations. More information will be forthcoming. 
* Educational SAGE3 webinars will be held, starting next year. Team members will present SAGE3&rsquo;s features and capabilities, provide use cases, answer questions, and solicit user feedback and use cases. More information will be forthcoming. 
Have you tried the SAGE3 alpha version for Linux, Windows and MacOS, which was released in December 2021? If not, go to the SAGE3 website, download the software and display client, and watch the &ldquo;How To&rdquo; video. 
<a href="https://sage3.sagecommons.org/">https://sage3.sagecommons.org/</a> 
REMINDER: SAGE3 / SAGE2 COMMUNITY USER FORUMS are now hosted on Slack. To join, go to the SAGE3 website and click on the Support menu: 
<a href="https://sage3.sagecommons.org/?page_id=60">https://sage3.sagecommons.org/?page_id=60</a> 
For SAGE3, subscribe to the sage3-support channel. 
For SAGE2, subscribe to the sage2-support channel. 
Thank you for your longstanding support of SAGE3 and we look forward to continued collaborations. 
Maxine Brown 
SAGE team member 
<a href="mailto:maxine@uic.edu">maxine@uic.edu</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 Hawai&rsquo;i at Manoa (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.

Announcing SAGE3 Upcoming Events !!

This academic year 2023 EVL alum Mike Papka has joined UIC&rsquo;s Department of Computer Science and EVL faculty as a professor, bringing years of expertise in high performance computing to campus. For nearly three decades, Papka has held the position of Research Scientist at Argonne National Laboratory contributing to research in high performance computing, scientific visualization of large and complex datasets, information visualization related to high-performance computing, virtual reality for science and the integration of edge services. 
Since 2006, he’s served as Deputy Associate Laboratory Director, Computing, Environment and Life Sciences (CELS) Directorate, providing strategic planning and management of the Laboratory Directorate comprising Biosciences, Computational Science, Data Science and Learning, Environmental Sciences, Mathematics and Computer Science, a joint institute with Northwestern University, and the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility. In his role, Papka aids in executing a research program that aims to couple computing-related activities with several science domains whose future is tied to progress in computing.
 For the last 12 years, Papka has served and continues to serve as Division Director at Argonne Leadership Computing Facility (ALCF). He is responsible for planning and executing facility upgrades and integrated data strategies, risk assessment and management, operations reporting and reviews, staff promotion and retention, and safety. The ALCF is home to some of the world&rsquo;s fastest supercomputers: Theta; a Cray XC40 supercomputer based on Intel’s Xeon Phi KNL processor and NVIDIA DGX-3, Polaris; a HPE Apollo 6500 Gen10+ based on AMD Milan processor and NVIDIA A100s, and Aurora; a Intel CPU/GPU system currently being installed that support scientific and engineering open science research. 
We welcome Mike&rsquo;s return to UIC and EVL! He undoubtedly will be a valued asset to our research and educational enterprise.

Events

EVL Faculty Present Research at the UIC Ecosystem Symposium 3

EVL’s Daniel J. Sandin Named Keynote Speaker at SD&A

SAGE3 AI-Enhanced Collaboration Platform Introduced

EVLers Present “Hummingbird: Live Theater Adventure Empowering Collaboration in Virtual Reality” & Win Best Art Paper Award at VINCI 2024

PhD Dissertation Announcement: “Human-Centered Design For Explainable, Spatial Machine Learning”

PhD Dissertation Announcement: “Understanding Lateral Asymmetry in Touchless Interaction”

Contact

Events

EVL Faculty Present Research at the UIC Ecosystem Symposium 3

EVL’s Daniel J. Sandin Named Keynote Speaker at ﻿SD&A

SAGE3 AI-Enhanced Collaboration Platform Introduced

EVLers Present “Hummingbird: Live Theater Adventure Empowering Collaboration in Virtual Reality” & Win Best Art Paper Award at VINCI 2024

PhD Dissertation Announcement: “Human-Centered Design For Explainable, Spatial Machine Learning”

PhD Dissertation Announcement: “Understanding Lateral Asymmetry in Touchless Interaction”

Contact

EVL’s Daniel J. Sandin Named Keynote Speaker at SD&A