Jillian Aurisano, a UIC Computer Science (CS) PhD student and Research Assistant in the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), was a recipient of the 2015 UIC Chancellor&rsquo;s Graduate Research Award. This award supports graduate students&rsquo; multidisciplinary scholarship and exposure to varied research and creative fields. Aurisano&rsquo;s research is in information and scientific visualization, visual analytics, computer graphics, and bioinformatics. The award, announced November 23, 2015, provides funding of up to $4,000 per year for up to two years to supplement students&rsquo; existing stipends. 
After receiving her undergraduate degree in biology, Aurisano became interested in analyzing large biological datasets using computational methods, and came to UIC as a CS graduate student. Aurisano, whose MS/PhD advisor is CS Associate Professor and EVL Director of Research Andy Johnson, did her MS thesis on the visual analysis of large volumes of complete bacterial genome sequences using high-resolution tiled display walls. 
For the Chancellor&rsquo;s Graduate Research Award and her PhD research, Aurisano wants to extend her current work on scalable visual designs for biological datasets on large displays. Inspired by discussions with EVL collaborators at Argonne National Laboratory and the Center for Microbial Oceanography Research and Education (C-MORE) at University of Hawai&rsquo;i at Manoa, she wants to explore new approaches to visualize genome-scale metabolic network simulation data and to display multiple, linked views on high-resolution displays. 
See the full list of winners of the <a href="http://grad.uic.edu/fellowships-awards/fall-2015-chancellors-award-winners">Fall 2015 Chancellor&rsquo;s Graduate Research Award</a>.
More information on <a href="ttps://youtu.be/yrSyi1RWcUw">BactoGeNIE.</a>

BactoGeNIE, Aurisanso&rsquo;s MS thesis, visualized the gene neighborhood around a hypothetical protein in close to 700 strains of Escherichia coli.

UIC CS/EVL PhD student Jillian Aurisano receives 2015 UIC Chancellor&rsquo;s Award Winner

Thanks to a major research infrastructure grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the University of Hawai&rsquo;i (UH) will be home to one of the best data visualization systems in the United States. The award to Jason Leigh, a Computer and Information Science Professor and Founder and Director of the Laboratory for Advanced Visualization and Applications (LAVA) at the University of Hawai&rsquo;i at Mānoa (UHM), is to build a state-of-the-art data visualization and virtual-reality system across 10 Hawai&rsquo;i campuses. Leigh got his PhD in Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), and is a Director Emeritus of the UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL). 
NSF provided $600,000 and UH added $257,000 for a total of $857,000 to develop the CyberCANOE, which stands for Cyber-enabled Collaboration Analysis Navigation and Observation Environment. The CyberCANOE is a visualization and collaboration infrastructure that will enable students and researchers to work together more effectively using large amounts of data and information. 
The new CyberCANOE, which is expected to be built in about three years, will enable Leigh&rsquo;s visualization laboratory to provide scientific communities with highly integrated, visually rich collaboration environments; to work with industry to facilitate the creation of new technologies for the advancement of science and engineering; and, to continue ongoing partnerships with many of the world&rsquo;s best scientists in academia and industry. With the CyberCANOE, the lab will also support the country&rsquo;s leadership position in high-performance computing and in contributing advancements to complex global issues, such as the environment, health and the economy. 
To learn more, see the UH News article, <a href="http://www.hawaii.edu/news/article.php?aId=7593">&ldquo;University of Hawai&rsquo;i Data Visualization Expert to Build Top System&rdquo;</a>, published December 16, 2015. 
See <a href="http://www.hawaii.edu/news/2015/12/14/data-visualization-expert-to-build-the-top-system-in-the-nation-at-uh/">additional information and a video</a>.

Jason Leigh, UHM &ldquo;CyberCANOE&rdquo; PI, is shown with co-PIs David Garmire, UHM Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering, and Chris Lee, the UH System&rsquo;s Academy for Creative Media (ACM) founder and director.

University of Hawai&rsquo;i Data Visualization Expert to Build Top System

Kevin Lynch, Vice President of Technology at Apple, where he leads the software team for the Apple Watch, was the keynote speaker at the UIC midyear undergraduate commencement on December 11, 2015. His address centered around bravery, imagination and kindness. His message encouraged UIC graduates to have &ldquo;bravery to speak your mind and effect change&rdquo; and extolled the importance of imagination as &ldquo;the art of what should be, and the science of what can be.&rdquo; 
He advised the new graduates to have &ldquo;the bravery to speak your mind and effect change. Change in the world, change in your life, change in your work. In my work, the best of times have been the bravest of times, certainly not the easiest…Give yourself permission to be imaginative…Imagination enables empathy: to put yourself in someone else&rsquo;s place and to understand…As we&rsquo;ve become more profoundly connected through technology, kindness can become more challenging as our relationships can become more abstract, more diffuse, with a larger number of others. These connections can also be incredibly powerful if we remember these are humans and maintain our ability to be kind in our interactions…What you will remember most over time, more than details of what you did, is how you felt and how you made others feel.&rdquo; 
Thirty years ago, Lynch studied Computer Science at UIC and was involved in the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL). In his speech, he credits EVL with teaching him &ldquo;the creative power of Art + Science. Working in the Electronic Visualization Lab, I experienced engineers and artists working together, literally sitting at the same lab benches. We&rsquo;d be developing graphics software, and artists would be using it to make art - and imagine new features right there.&rdquo; 
After the commencement, Lynch visited several UIC colleges and departments, including EVL, where he saw art and science applications in EVL&rsquo;s CAVE2&trade; system, met with Engineering and Architecture, Design and the Arts faculty members, and held a Q&amp;A session with CS undergraduate and graduate students. 
See the <a href="http://engineering.uic.edu/COE/KevinLynch">transcript and video of Kevin Lynch&rsquo;s presentation</a>.

Kevin Lynch with EVL Director Emeritus Dan Sandin in the CAVE2&trade; Hybrid Reality Environment at UIC/EVL.

Apple Executive Kevin Lynch Speaks at UIC&rsquo;s Mid-year Commencement

Hacking for wildlife: students use technology to save the animals 
The challenge was inspired by public backlash over the hunting of Cecil the Lion in July, when hashtags like #justiceforcecil, #savethelions and #bantrophyhunting began viral trends. The Chicago Hackathon for Wildlife challenge was organized by the Internet of Elephants, an organization that supports collaborations between nonprofit organizations and technologists, and held at Solstice Mobile, a Chicago software company. 
Sixty participants from around the world formed teams of two to five members. Four winning teams were announced for overall best, best use of technology, best impact to conservation and best prototype. UIC Computer Science and EVL exchange students from the Politecnico di Milano in Italy — Filippo Pellolio, Marco Cavallo and Andrea Rottigni (Team Italy) — came in second for best prototype, having worked 36 hours straight on their entry, &ldquo;Wildlife Defense.&rdquo; 
For more information, see the UIC NEWS article <a href="http://news.uic.edu/hacking-for-wildlife-students-use-technology-to-save-the-animals">&ldquo;Hacking for wildlife: students use technology to save the animals&rdquo;</a> by Francisca Corona, published December 17, 2015.

UIC College of Engineering computer science graduate students (L-R) Filippo Pellolio, Marco Cavallo and Andrea Rottigni at the Chicago Hackathon for Wildlife challenge.

UIC&rsquo;s &ldquo;Team Italy&rdquo; participates in Chicago Hackathon for Wildlife challenge

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

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

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

Victor Mateevitsi, a University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) PhD student in the Computer Science (CS) Department and the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), applied to Microsoft Research for a 2015 summer internship to work on virtual and augmented reality systems. Selected, he worked in Jaron Lanier&rsquo;s lab; Lanier is a highly regarded computer scientist, writer and composer, who pioneered virtual and augmented reality in the 1980s. Lanier is researching multi-person mixed reality - i.e., enabling more than one person to interact with the same virtual object or phenomenon at the same time. 
Mateevitsi, whose PhD advisor is CS Associate Professor and EVL Director of Research Andy Johnson, is interested in Human Augmentics and Sensory Augmentation; i.e., how wearable technologies and body sensors affect people&rsquo;s perception of the world around them and, more specifically, how these devices can improve one&rsquo;s awareness in complex environments. 
Given his interest in wearable technologies, the opportunity to work on augmented reality at Microsoft Research for the summer, particularly under the tutelage of a luminary in the field, was a wonderful opportunity. Mateevitsi worked on applications with interns from Stanford University, MIT Media Lab, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Georgia Tech, and other notable institutions. 
Lanier&rsquo;s project is called Comradre (pronounced &ldquo;comradery&rdquo;). Headsets were made using smartphones and laptop computers, and the tracking of a person&rsquo;s head movements were performed using external sensors. Mateevitsi worked with a small group to create a system that allowed sound waves to be detected and then shown visually. In one scene from the group&rsquo;s video, the sound produced by Lanier&rsquo;s flute playing was shown in mixed reality. 
To learn more about how researchers in Lanier&rsquo;s lab at Microsoft Research are exploring ways for people to share experiences in mixed reality, see the October 12, 2015 article <a href="http://www.technologyreview.com/news/542341/microsoft-researchers-are-working-on-multi-person-virtual-reality/">&ldquo;Microsoft Researchers Are Working on Multi-Person Virtual Reality&rdquo;</a> by Will Night, published in the MIT Technology Review.

This example of shared mixed reality shows two students both seeing a visual effect as they shake hands.

Summer Internship Enables UIC/EVL Student to Work on Multi-Person Virtual Reality

ABSTRACT 
The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) opened the UTS Data Arena in July 2015. The Data Arena is an interactive 3D-Stereo Data Science Theatre, which runs EVL&rsquo;s Omegalib. The Data Arena Theatre is similar to EVL&rsquo;s CAVE2. The cylindrical display is 4 meters high, and 10 meters in diameter, driven by six ceiling-mounted video projectors, edge blended to produce a seamless 20K stereoscopic display. Viewers stand in the middle, wearing active shutter glasses, surrounded by a 16-channel audio, and a 12-camera motion capture system. Various data pipelines are in development, including one which uses Houdini (typically used in Feature Film VFX) to generate 3D geometry based on input channel data. This presentation will include some recent visualization work, describe the Data Arena development, and show how Houdini is being used for visualization. 
BEN SIMONS - BIOGRAPHY 
Ben Simons is the Technical Director of the UTS Data Arena, an Interactive Data Science Theatre which opened in July 2015 at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). 
Ben has worked in various forms of computer graphics for more than 25 years, gaining international awards, prizes, and patents. His software developments range from real-time image processing systems (CSIRO NSW-RTA Safe-T-Cam), to 10 years scientific visualization at Sydney University, to 3D-Stereo Virtual Reality Systems that explored the Sydney Harbor Sonar Data (VisLab ATP), to the creation of Visual Effects for 15 Feature Films, which include Happy Feet 2, Resident Evil Extinction, Fast & Furious, and Taking Woodstock. 
As 3D FX Supervisor for Dr D Studios in Sydney, Ben built a department of 63 Visual FX Artists & Graphics Pipeline Engineers to complete Happy Feet 2 in 3D Stereo for Warner Bros in 2012. 
In the 7 years prior to Dr D, Ben worked in Toronto, Canada, in technical computer graphics roles for MrX Inc, and for C.O.R.E. Feature Animation (Disney&rsquo;s The Wild). Roles include R&D Software Development, Head of Systems, Head of VFX, and Senior Technical Supervision of Feature Film. 
For 10 years Ben managed Sydney VisLab at the University of Sydney, a center for scientific visualization. In 1996, a computing cluster he configured won the IEEE Gordon Bell Prize for High Performance Computing (Price/Performance Category). 
Ben holds First Class Honours in Computer Science from The University of Sydney, and obtained 4 patents while at CSIRO. In 1996 his group was awarded the QANTAS Rolls Royce Award for Engineering Excellence for the Safe-T-Cam traffic camera. He developed the real-time-video vehicle recognition/tracking software and designed the infra-red flash trigger hardware. 
Ben Simons is a Visual Effects Supervisor accredited by the Australian Academy of Cinematic & Television Arts (AACTA), a member of the IEEE and the ACM Computer Society, is and has served on the board of the Visual Effects Society (VES Australia).

Presentation Ben Simons, University of Technology Sydney (UTS)

Krishna Bhradwaj&rsquo;s MS Thesis Defense 
Committee: Andrew Johnson, Luc Renambot, Liz Marai 
Abstract: 
The amount of data that we deal with, on a daily basis, is ever increasing and coupled with the fact that display technology is getting cheaper by the day, this has led to the rise of large/scalable resolution display systems. With more and more people adopting large/scalable resolution display systems in their work places, these display systems are being used for data visualization as well as collaboration. 
The complexity of data being visualized and the nature of collaborative tasks being carried out using large/scalable resolution displays are changing the way we use these displays. It is no longer enough to passively look at data on these displays. There is a growing need to actively engage and interact with the content. As such, large/scalable resolution display systems that handle large amounts of data need to provide adequate functionality to interact with this data. SAGE2 comes as an answer to this. It allows scalable displays to effectively act as platforms for data visualization and at the same time gives these systems the power of multi-user interaction. I propose two textual annotation tools to annotate documents and images in SAGE2. These annotation tools will further the capabilities of SAGE2 in terms of allowing users to collaborate. Through this thesis, I have evaluated these tools leading to insights about their usability, affordances, and limitations.

Textual annotation being used in EVL's Cyber-Commons

Textual Annotation Tools for SAGE2

The IEEE VIS 2015 Arts Program, or VISAP&rsquo;15, showcases innovative artwork and research that explores the exciting and increasingly prominent intersections between art and visualization. Through an exhibition that run concurrently with the IEEE 2015 VIS conference, the Arts Program aims to foster new thinking, discussion, and collaboration between artists, designers, technologists, visualization scientists, and others working at the intersection of these fields. 
Co-Chairs Angus Forbes (EVL/UIC), Fanny Chevalier (Inria), and Daria Tsoupikova invite all to attend. 
VISAP&rsquo;15, the IEEE VIS Arts Program 
Exhibition - October 19 - 30 
Panel discussions - October 28, 1:00 PM

VISAP&rsquo;15 Announcement

Exhibition Opening - IEEE VIS 2015 Arts Program (VISAP&rsquo;15)

The Office of the Vice President for Research of the University of Illinois has published the report &ldquo;Innovative Discoveries From the University of Illinois.&rdquo; 
The CAVE&trade; and CAVE2&trade; systems are two of the featured innovative discoveries. The CAVE (CAVE Automatic Virtual Environment) virtual-reality environment, introduced in 1992, and the CAVE2 hybrid-reality system, introduced in 2012, were developed by the UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL). 
Another innovation listed is the special effects for the 1977 movie &ldquo;Star Wars,&rdquo; made possible with EVL technologies. 
Many life-changing innovations are documented in the publication, including sound-on-film movie technology, the Plato computer-based education system, the plasma display panel, NCSA Mosaic, infrared night vision technology, and wearable electronics. 
The publication can be downloaded from the <a href="http://research.uillinois.edu/innovative-discoveries-university-illinois">web</a>. The CAVE and CAVE2 are featured in a <a href="http://research.uillinois.edu/cave%E2%84%A2-and-cave2%E2%84%A2-virtual-reality-theaters">related blog</a>.

EVL students in original CAVE (1999)

Innovative Discoveries From the University of Illinois

The week of October 25, 2015, the international IEEE Visualization (VIS) 2015 conference is being held in downtown Chicago, and the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), part of the Computer Science (CS) department at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has a leadership role in helping ensure its success. 
EVL director Maxine Brown serves as General Co-chair with Michael E. Papka of Argonne National Laboratory (who is also a CS/EVL alumnus). EVL CS faculty G. Elisabeta Marai is co-chair of the Doctoral Colloquium. EVL CS faculty Angus Forbes and EVL School of Design faculty Daria Tsoupikova are co-chairs of the Arts Program (VISAP). EVL director of research and CS faculty Andy Johnson serves on the Program Committees of the Scientific Visualization (SciVis) and VISAP tracks. EVL senior research scientist and director emeritus Dan Sandin is participating in VISAP as an invited artist and panelist. 
EVL CS students are also participating. Jillian Aurisano and Tim Luciano are serving as Student Volunteers. Aurisano also has two accepted posters: &ldquo;Show Me Data,&rdquo; which received an honorable mention, is about a conversational interface in visual data exploration that is being done with CS advisor Andy Johnson and professor Barbara Di Eugenio; and, &ldquo;AlignmentVis: Visual Analytics for Ontology Matching,&rdquo; which describes her work from the Data and Web Semantics course taught by professor Isabel Cruz. Angus Forbes&rsquo; student Alessandro Chetta is presenting a paper in the Workshop on Visual Analytics in Health Care. Forbes&rsquo; student Kyle Almryde received honorable mention in the SciVis Data Contest for his web-based 3D visualization application entitled &ldquo;Halos in a Dark Sky: Interactively Exploring the Structure of Dark Matter Halo Merger Trees.&rdquo; 
In addition to the above, many EVL alumni are also involved in organizing this conference, and many more will be attending the one week event. The UIC CS department is one of the sponsors. 
The conference press release below provides additional details about <a href="http://ieeevis.org">IEEE VIS 2015</a>. The <a href="http://visap.uic.edu/2015/">IEEE VIS Arts Program</a> is open to the public for two weeks, from October 19-30, and is being held at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago&rsquo;s (SAIC) LeRoy Neiman Center, 37 S. Wabash. 
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 
2015 IEEE Visualization Conference Connects Latest in Research to Real World Practice 
CHICAGO, 12 October 2015 - Over a thousand data visualization specialists are expected at the 2015 IEEE Visualization (VIS) conference in Chicago this month. For one week starting October 25, VIS will host the largest annual gathering of academics, practitioners, and researchers focused on making every variety of dataset visually understandable. 
After its successful meeting in Paris last year, the international VIS conference is returning to the United States, where organizers hope to attract a record number of young practitioners seeking opportunities to meet and mingle with the senior members and leaders in their field. This year&rsquo;s program includes several returning events aimed at encouraging such interactions, such as the Doctoral Colloquium and Digital Compass activities, along with a new industry-targeted Practitioner Event. 
<ldquo;This conference is the best opportunity all year for the data visualization community to see and share the latest advancements, tools, and techniques,rdquo; said Michael E. Papka, VIS 2015 co-chair. &ldquo;From the academic to the applied, VIS has something to offer everybody working in the field today.&rdquo; 
VIS 2015 papers talks and panels are organized into three tracks: Visual Analytics Science and Technology (VAST), Information Visualization (InfoVis), and Scientific Visualization (SciVis). These main track offerings and a three-day exhibition begin on Tuesday October 27. Three co-located symposiums are held on the first two days of VIS 2015: Visualization in Data Science (VDS), Large Data Analysis and Visualization (LDAV), and Visualization for Cyber Security (VizSec). The VIS offerings on Sunday October 25 and Monday October 26 also include eight workshops and nine tutorials. 
The VIS 2015 Arts Program features a papers track and a two-week public art exhibition at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago&rsquo;s (SAIC’s) LeRoy Neiman Center, which is located across the street from the conference venue, the Palmer House Hilton, in Chicago&rsquo;s downtown Loop district. 
IEEE VIS is sponsored by IEEE’s Computer Society. Additional support comes from academic, industry, and government research organizations. <a href="http://ieeevis.org">Register and learn more about the conference program</a>. Follow us on Twitter, like our Facebook page, or visit our LinkedIn page. 
CONTACT: 
Laura Wolf (Argonne National Laboratory) 
IEEE Visualization 2015 Coordinating Chair 
<a href="mailto:info@ieeevis.org">info@ieeevis.org</a>

&ldquo;Halos in a Dark Sky: Interactively Exploring the Structure of Dark Matter Halo Merger Trees,&rdquo; received honorable mention in the IEEE VIS 2015 SciVis Data Contest.

EVL has leadership roles in international IEEE Visualization 2015 conference

EVL PhD alumna and director of the University of Arkansas Little Rock&rsquo;s Emerging Analytics Center, Carolina Cruz-Neira hosts the inaugural open house of her latest Virtual Reality Center. 
Among Cruz-Neira&rsquo;s accomplishments is as the co-creator of the CAVE&trade; Virtual Realtiy Environment, developed as part of her PhD research at EVL. She is also recognized by having founded and led very successful virtual reality research centers, like the Virtual Reality Applications Center at Iowa State University, the Louisiana Immersive Technologies Enterprise and now the Emerging Analytics Center (EAC). 
EAC&rsquo;s work is centered on interdisciplinary projects and it covers a wide range of topics from the development and use of large-scale one-of-a-kind systems to every day portable technologies such as smart phones, glasses and tablets as well as pioneering applications for these technologies in many disciplines and markets. 
EAC&rsquo;’s projects are in areas such as large data visualization, data analytics, training environments, software architectures for visualization and virtual reality, technology development, modeling and simulation, museum installations, and tech-transfer to many of our sponsors and collaborators. 
Join Cruz-Neira and EAC faculty, researchers, and students at the facility open house October 16-17, 2015 at the Emerging Analytics Center, UALR EIT - 420. 
Register: <a href="discovervirtualreality.eventbrite.com">discovervirtualreality.eventbrite.com</a>

EAC Open House Flyer

Carolina Cruz-Neira

EVL Alumna Opens Emerging Analytics Center at University of Arkansas

Scott Barrows, Director of Simulation Programming at the Jump Trading Simulation &amp; Education Center in Peoria, Illinois presents his team&rsquo;s development of medical simulations and interactive education. 
This presentation will introduce participants to the active development of medical simulation and interactive education at one of the leading simulation centers in the world. At the Jump Center, innovation is successfully implemented into the reality of the current health care system. Simulation in health care serves to train, educate, and provide insight into the challenges and opportunities for improvement in process and product technology. 
Medical and healthcare education has changed dramatically over the last 25 years. As a piece of the healthcare &ldquo;triple aim&rdquo; (improve the health of the defined population, enhance the patient care experience, and reduce the per capita cost of care), medical simulation is an essential piece of best practices in medical and healthcare education. 
ABOUT THE JUMP CENTER 
The Jump Trading Simulation &amp; Education Center in Peoria, Illinois is one of the leading medical simulation facilities in the world. A collaborative institution between the University of Illinois College of Medicine, Peoria and OSF Health System, the Jump Center is also a partner of the ARCHES program with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign College of Engineering. 
SIMnext, the product engineering arm of the Jump Center, is a related initiative where clinicians are guided by real-time patient data to provide the bridge between learning environments and real-life clinical experience. The Jump Center is also a member of Chicago-based MATTER, an innovation incubator for healthcare. 
<a href="http://simnext.com">http://simnext.com</a> 
<a href="http://matterchicago.com">http://matterchicago.com</a> 
SPEAKER BIO 
Scott Barrows is the Director of Simulation Programming at the Jump Trading Simulation &amp; Education Center in Peoria, Illinois. The research center is the largest medical simulation facility in the world, and affiliated with the University of Illinois College of Medicine, Peoria and OSF Health System. The Jump Center is part of the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ARCHES program. The center is also an innovation partner with MATTER and SIMnext. 
Scott Barrows is a frequent advisor, lecturer, and collaborator at Stanford University School of Medicine and Apple. His work appears in over 55 medical textbooks and 270 surgical journals and other publications. He has directed 17 medical animations and videos and numerous software interactives. 
Barrows was previously Vice-President of Marketing at a biotechnology laboratory in Virginia, and Vice-President of Creative at a medical software &ldquo;think tank&rdquo; in Nevada, where the company was awarded Nevada Software Company of the Year in 2012. 
He was the Director of the Biomedical Visualization graduate program at the University of Illinois at Chicago Medical Center for numerous years and is still serves on the adjunct faculty. He was also an assistant professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, and served as an advisor to the Virginia Commonwealth University College of Business. 
He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including recognition from two US Presidents, the Smithsonian Institution, and the University of Illinois (including 1988 Alumnus of the Year, College of Applied Health Sciences, and Excalibur Award for Excellence in Teaching). 
Barrows is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Springfield (MA, Educational Leadership) and the University of Illinois at Chicago (BS, Biomedical Visualization, with Honors). He also attended the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Scott Barrows

Medical Simulation and Interactive Education at the Jump Center

JD Pirtle, a UIC alumnus with an MFA in Electronic Visualization from the College of Architecture and the Arts (now renamed College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts), was a student and staff member at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) before leaving to create the position of Director of Innovation at the Catherine Cook School, a Chicago-area private school for preschool through eighth grade children. 
Pirtle was featured in the Chicago Tribune article &ldquo;Chicago private schools lead &lsquo;high-tech, high-touch&rsquo; movement&rdquo; written by reporter John Carpenter, which was published August 28, 2015. Pirtle created the school&rsquo;s Idea Lab (Innovation, Design, Engineering and Art). The article goes on to say that &ldquo;projects incorporate robotics, computer programming, digital manufacturing and electronics, among other things.&rdquo; Pirtle&rsquo;s program aims to &ldquo;teach design thinking, which emphasizes collaboration, problem solving and creative thinking.&rdquo; 
One highlight of the Idea Lab is technology developed by EVL. Pirtle built a tiled display wall consisting of 12 screens that takes up nearly an entire wall running EVL&rsquo;s SAGE2&trade; software. SAGE2 facilitates group collaboration by enabling users to easily access and display large amounts of high-resolution information on a tiled display wall, treating it as if it were one big laptop screen. Using SAGE2, &ldquo;students can literally drag projects from their tablets or computers onto the wall as they are being discussed.&rdquo; 
According to the article, &ldquo;Catherine Cook is not alone. At other private schools in the city, tablets and laptops are no longer the apex when it comes to technology in the classroom. Officials at those schools say parents are increasingly demanding that students learn as much by designing, making and writing computer code as they do from lectures and books.&rdquo; 
Pirtle explains that &ldquo;the educational need is to apply technology to learning challenges. &lsquo;I never want to just throw technology at them,&rsquo; he says. &lsquo;I want them to reach into a tool box for what they need.&rsquo;...&lsquo;We&rsquo;re a high-tech, high-touch school...The real goal is to make (students) producers and not just consumers.&rsquo;&rdquo; 
On a separate but related note, in June 2015, Pirtle organized the Catherine Cook School conference, IDEA:TE (Innovation, Design, Engineering, and Art: Transforming Education). Preschool through 12th grade educators were invited to attend and explore ways to integrate traditional and emerging technologies into their curricula through hands-on experience. The sessions were led by educators and experts from UIC, IIT/SAIC and UW Oshkosh in fields such as robotics, 3D printing, laser cutting and wearable technology. <a href="http://www.catherinecookschool.org/page.cfm?p=6581">Another conference is planned for 2016</a>. 
<a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/bluesky/originals/ct-technology-chicago-schools-bsi-20150828-story.html">Read the Chicago Tribune article</a>.

JD Pirtle uses EVL&rsquo;s SAGE2 software on the Idea Lab&rsquo;s tiled display wall during the Catherine Cook School&rsquo;s IDEA:TE conference.

One Chicago grade school is transforming education with EVL technologies

EVL PhD candidate, Jillian Aurisano present her research in data visualization and exploration using a conversational interface. 
Visual data exploration poses challenges for &rsquo;InfoVis Novices&rsquo;. A &rsquo;conversational interface&rsquo; which would enable users to generate and interact with visualizations through natural language and gestures, while maintaining a history of the data exploration, has the potential to ameliorate many of these challenges. We performed an exploratory, observational study designed to examine the role of such a conversational interface in visual data exploration. We simulated a conversational interface, using a remote human mediator, with multiple cycles of visualization construction. We believe analysis of this data will yield concrete design goals for conversational interfaces in information visualization. Research results and future work will be presented.

&ldquo;Show Me Data.&rdquo; Observational Study of a Conversational Interface in Visual Data Exploration

EVL PhD candidate, Michael Lewis summarizes his research contributions at EVL with an in depth view of his PhD research and summer internship at Argonne National Laboratory. 
An introductory overview is provided of the Resource Descriptive Framework RDF, specifying ways RDF queries of linked data can be facilitated within a distributed environment. Lewis also describes how his research uses a unique path-based approach to distributed queries of linked data. 
The presentation concludes with an overview of the research activities and experience obtained while Lewis was an intern at Argonne National Laboratory working on "Optimizing Read/Write Times for Mutli-dimensional Datasets."

A PhD Journey

M. Lewis, EVL

From Disasterville to Semantic Big Data Queries and Distributed Computing; Michael Lewis's PhD Journey

As you walk through downtown Chicago, don&rsquo;t be surprised to advertisements for the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) popping up on city streets. The UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) was contacted earlier this year by the UIC Office of Public and Government Affairs, Marketing and Brand Management department, to provide photos for ads on Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) buses and at O&rsquo;Hare airport. An ad was recently spotted by a UIC Computer Science student...

Students at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) explore connectome imagery in EVL&rsquo;s CAVE2&trade; hybrid reality environment.

UIC&rsquo;s CAVE2&trade; showcased on CTA buses

Senior data analyst, Wei Xie in the Alibaba Safety and Security Intelligence Center will present Alibaba's work on large-scale data visualization and analytics aimed at identifying and analyzing risks and frauds in customer transaction data records. The presentation will provide and introduction to The Alibaba Group, and overview of the cyber-crime challenge currently being faced in China, and a discussion of big data vs. cyber-crime with prospective approaches and solutions. 
Speaker: Wei Xie 
Wei Xie, director of Alibaba's Business Safety Agency, is the leader of SSIC (Safety and Security Intelligence center). SSIC of Alibaba group is China’s first data visualization center based on real-time operation data in the area of online safety and security. Mr. Xie has over 15 years of experiences in the field of IT as well as safety and security. He is also the expert on anti-fraud, data safety. Conducting university collaborations is one of his main responsibilities as well.

When Big Data Meets Cyber-Crime

The Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at University of Illinois at Chicago was an early participant in the project &ldquo;Virtual Harlem,&rdquo; conceived in 1997 by Bryan Carter as he began his PhD dissertation work at the University of Missouri-Columbia, making it one of the earliest virtual reality environments, especially for the humanities. 
Carter started Virtual Harlem as a way to better engage his students, who were studying African-American literature. Immersing themselves in the literature - such as walking by the Cotton Club and hearing Ethel Waters singing &ldquo;Stormy Weather&rdquo; from within - helped with that engagement. A secondary benefit was that it preserved the cultural heritage of Harlem's 1920s Jazz Age neighborhood. 
Starting in 1998, Carter worked with Jason Leigh, Andy Johnson and students at EVL, as well as faculty and students from UIC&rsquo;s African American Studies, English Literature, Pedagogy, and Communications departments, to port to EVL&rsquo;s CAVE virtual environment. For UIC researchers, &ldquo;Virtual Harlem&rdquo; was a means by which to study how virtual reality could be best used as an educational tool, both locally and over distance, and to improve the quality of virtual-reality tools and techniques to better bring this, and other, virtual worlds to life. The &ldquo;Virtual Harlem Project&rdquo; was well documented on the EVL website <https://www.evl.uic.edu/cavern/harlem/>. 
Carter got his PhD, worked at Central Missouri State University, and is now an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Arizona, specializing in African American literature of the 20th Century, with a primary focus on the Harlem Renaissance and a secondary emphasis on digital culture. Virtual Harlem evolved too, and over time was transformed to run in Second Life and OpenSim, and soon on the Virtual World Web. 
Recently, the story &ldquo;Virtually Visiting the Harlem Renaissance&rdquo; appeared in the newsletter Hyperallergic, which profiles art and culture in the world today. The August 18, 2015 article by Allison Meier bemoans the recent demolition of Harlem&rsquo;s Renaissance Ballroom. Though a piece of Harlem&rsquo;s historic neighborhood is now gone, it is preserved in Bryan Carter&rsquo;s Virtual Harlem. <a href="http://hyperallergic.com/229303/virtually-visiting-the-harlem-renaissance/">The article</a> credits EVL&rsquo;s CAVE, where the first iteration of Virtual Harlem began. 
Virtual Harlem was also featured in <a href="http://wp.me/p485L9-mg">The Drax Files Radio Hour</a>, posted September 12, 2014. The website has a podcast interview with Carter, video about Virtual Harlem, and also recognizes that EVL&rsquo;s CAVE and ImmersaDesk were originally used to showcase this historic American neighborhood. 
More information on <a href="http://ibryancarter.com/#about">Bryan Carter</a>. 
EVL will reach out to Bryan Carter - perhaps it is time to see Virtual Harlem in EVL&rsquo;s CAVE2 hybrid reality environment. 
CAVE and CAVE2 are trademarks of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees.

Image taken in 2002 of Virtual Harlem by Bryan Carter ported to the CAVE virtual environment at the UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory.

Virtual Harlem Lives On

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

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

UIC Computer Science Undergraduate Students&rsquo; Potential Accelerates with a Special Mentorship 
August 6, 2015 
UIC Computer Science (CS) undergraduates Carlos Uribe, Brook Habtegiorgis, and Josh Rodriguez, under the mentorship of CS associate professor Liz Marai and CS PhD student Jillian Aurisano, are recipients of a grant from the Computing Research Association&rsquo;s Collaborative Research Experience for Undergraduates (CREU) program. This grant, expressly for minority students, provides a small stipend to conduct research over the coming academic year. 
This past summer, Marai provided these students, as well as several others, with Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) internships from grants she has from the National Science Foundation and other sources, to work at the UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) on visualizing complex combustion and cosmology datasets and displaying the results in EVL&rsquo;s CAVE2&trade; virtual-reality environment. The students not only had to learn new software design, visualization and human-computer interaction skills to work with these large-scale scientific datasets, but had to learn how to do interdisciplinary research, give presentations and write papers about their work. This summer internship program was the basis of Marai&rsquo;s grant proposal &ldquo;Visual Encodings for Exploring Large Scale Scientific Data in Immersive Environmentsrdquo; to the CREU program, which now that it has been awarded, affords these students opportunities to continue to do research during the 2015-2016 academic year. 
Marai is committed to increasing diversity in computer science. Habtegiorgis, Uribe and Rodriguez are African-American and Hispanic, which are minority groups in the computing field. Uribe and Rodriguez took Marai&rsquo;s computer science class last Spring and received A&rsquo;s; Habtegiorgis worked on an urban data visualization project under the direction of Aurisano, a board member and president of the Women in Computer Science club at UIC. Marai, impressed with their efforts to date, applied for the CREU grant because &ldquo;I believe in their potential.&rdquo; 
While all these students have an interest in engineering, they came from disadvantaged backgrounds, had to overcome many hurdles, and only learned to to program relatively late in life. In the past year, they have caught up and surpassed their peers, which speaks volumes about their abilities. Given their REU experience this summer, most are now contemplating graduate school. All have said that they want to finish the projects they started this summer, whether they are funded or not.

UIC Computer Science undergraduates (left to right) Carlos Uribe, Josh Rodriguez and Brook Habtegiorgis in the CAVE2&trade; Hybrid Reality Environment developed by the UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL).

Computer Research Association Funds UIC Computer Science Undergrads to Pursue Careers in Research

EVL PhD candidate Chihua Ma presents approaches for visualizing biological data at EVL's summer tech talks. 
As biological systems dynamically change over time in nature, the measurement of timing effects should be taken into consideration to better understand the evolution of biological processes. Currently, two main visualization techniques for representing time are time-to-time mapping (animation) and time-to-space mapping (timeline plots and space-time cube). In addition, biological systems include both spatial and non-spatial information. Using multiple and coordinated views is considered to be a good approach to integrate spatial and non-spatial features. 
This presentation introduces relevant approaches for visualizing spatial/non-spatial time-based data followed by two case studies: visualization of dynamic mouse brain networks and visualization of probability distributions at the steady states in the FFL network motif.

Space Attribute Cube Visualization

Visualization of time-series biological data with spatial and non-spatial features embedded

EVL PhD candidate Huy Bui presents his dissertation focusing on the optimization of data movement. 
Committee: 
Andrew Johnson, Chair and Advisor 
Ugo Buy 
Luc Renambot 
Jason Leigh, University of Hawaii at Manoa 
Venkatram Vishwanath, Argonne National Laboratory 
Abstract 
Data-centric applications on supercomputers need to reliably and rapidly compute and move large amounts of data through interconnect networks. The same trend is also observed in commodity clusters. Thus, optimizing data movement is essential at extreme scales in order to effectively utilize the systems. However, most of the optimization works are carried out separately at different layers in the supercomputers. In this dissertation, I present a holistic approach that takes system&rsquo;s network routing, interconnect network topology and application&rsquo;s communication patterns into optimizing that results in better performance over current data movement mechanisms. My approach includes heuristic algorithms and optimization models with solvers to improve and optimize data movement. The approach is realized in a Data Movement Optimization Framework (OPTIQ) that provides an application programming interface (API) requiring minimal changes in applications for integration. The OPTIQ framework is also extensible, allowing further development and expansion on algorithms for recommending multiple paths for data movement, different ways to schedule data transfer, and various mechanisms to transfer the data. It can also be extended to other systems.

Presentation Slides

Mira - a Blue Gene/Q supercomputer at Argonne National Laboratory

Data Movement Optimization Framework (OPTIQ)

EVL Research Experience Undergraduates Brook Habtegiorgis and Evan Kreft present their research in turbulent combustion concepts, equations and modeling strategies. 
Abstract 
Turbulent reacting flows can be studied using different numerical simulations and mathematical models. These methods usually require discretization of input data and output is also typically reported in discrete form. Our clients from Computational Multiphase Transport Lab (CMTL) who focus in turbulent flows would like us to preserve the continuity of the data and find a way to display the spectral information (polynomial coefficients) for different variables such as density, pressure and velocity at the same time. We have approached the problem using Omegalib to generate a point cloud model for each variable and 2D representation of the dataset to directly compare numerically and find correlation among the variables.

Visual Encodings for Spectral Information in Turbulent Combustion Simulation Datasets, in an Immersive Environment

Techweek is a national organization that hosts week-long events - including a 2-day technology conference and expo in several major cities, to engage and excite the general public, and to provide opportunities to network, learn and explore with the local tech community. Techweek selects top minds in technology to speak on numerous topics. 
<a href="http://techweek.com/speakers/chicago/">Techweek Chicago&rsquo;s conference</a> is being held June 25-26. 
Techweek Chicago includes, as one of its speakers, Victor Mateevisti, a PhD student in the Department of Computer Science and a Research Assistant at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Mateevitsi will give the presentation &dlquo;A Real Life Spider Sense&drquo; on Friday 26th during the Lifestyle &amp; Technology session from 3:00pm - 5:45pm. His goal is to motivate people to think how ubiquitous technology&rsquo;s potential can enhance the human experience, enabling faster non-biological evolution as a species. 
Session: <a href="http://techweek.com/event/lifestyle-technology/">http://techweek.com/event/lifestyle-technology/</a> 
Speaker: <a href="http://techweek.com/speakers/chicago/#speaker/Victor%20Mateevitsi">http://techweek.com/speakers/chicago/#speaker/Victor%20Mateevitsi</a>

Victor Mateevitsi to speak at Techweek Chicago

EVL PhD candidate and Research Assistant, Kyle Almryde discusses the Dark Sky Universe simulation and the development of a Dark Matter Halo visualization. 
Abstract: 
SciVis 2015 is upon us and with it, the annual visualization challenge. This year&rsquo;s contest focuses on the visualization of the Universe using the Dark Sky simulations, a large-scale cosmological N-body dark matter simulation, provided by researchers at Stanford University. Large scale cosmological simulations make up a core part of our understanding of the known Universe since the &lsuo;Big Bang&rsquo;' to today some 14 billion years later; with the best of these simulations showing results consistent with those actually observed by astronomers in the night sky. The Dark Sky dataset simulates the formation of structure of the Universe through time via 10240^3 dark matter particles. Through gravitational interactions these particles form complex structures known as &ldquo'halos&rdquo;, which may represent galaxies or even clusters of galaxies. As these halos expand, split, merge, grow and collapse, the structure of the Universe grows along side it. Visualizing these transformations undergone by halos over time can offer a more informed understanding of future observations of the night sky by researchers. My talk will focus on the development of a Dark Matter Halo visualization which examines the evolution of the structure and interaction of these cosmic objects through time.

Temporal visualization of Universe expansion using simulated dark matter particles.

Halos in a Dark Sky: Visualizing the Universe

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

SAGE2 running on EVL's tiled displayed.

Representatives from <a href="http://www.forumstudio.com">Forum Studio</a> and <a href="http://mudaidesign.com/">Mu/Dai</a> present their company&rsquo;s projects, as well as a collaborative research project focusing on the intersection of digital UX space and Architecture. Of particular interest is the use of collaborative technologies, tools and workspaces - such as SAGE2 to support this research and associated workflows. 
SPEAKERS 
Joel Putnam 
Project Designer at Forum Studio, and Adjunct Professor at Illinois Institute of Technology 
As a Project Designer with more than 10 years of experience, Joel is responsible for the initial concept design and inspiration gathering. For him, it&rsquo;s all about the inspiration and analytics. He has demonstrated a creative approach to crafting building design solutions that are innovative and logical. Within these indefinable, arguably unmeasuarable, and in many cases contested kernels of complexity, you will find creativity and stimulation. Through his creative process, he has designed a number of complex mixed use and institutional projects, including master planning, throughout the United States and Asia. 
Patrick DiMichele 
VP, Experience Design, at Mu/Dai 
Patrick has spent his 15-year career connecting organizations and audiences. To make that happen he sketches ideas and stretches ideas; makes stuff and fakes stuff; combines things and refines things. Resulting in work that generates meaningful impact. Most recently he was director of user experience at Manifest.

Joel Putnam

Forum Studio and Mu/Dai discuss the intersection of digital UX space and Architecture

PhD candidate Paul Murray presents his research in biological data visualization techniques. 
The Pathway Commons web service brings together several large biological databases, with tens of thousands of biological entities and interactions that can be traversed and queried through the Pathway Commons API. Query results are returned using the BioPax format (which is an RDF/XML OWL file), and each BioPax file contains a number of different relationship types. Rather than try to encompass a wide variety of node types and link types into a single visualization, a linked-view visualization approach is employed that presents each type of relationship in its own view, with linked interactions between views. This system is being integrated with the Pathway Commons API to enable effective visual queries of complex biological data.

Screenshot of linked-view visualization approach.

Exploring BioPax and the Pathway Commons API Using Linked Views

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

Arthur Nishimoto Research Overview Slides

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

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

Northwestern University postdoctoral research associate, Steve Haroz presents his research in brain perception of visual information at EVL. 
Abstract: 
Although the infographic and design communities have used simple pictographic representations for decades, it is still unclear whether they can make visualizations more effective. Using simple charts, we tested how pictographic representations impact (1) memory for information just viewed, as well as under the load of additional information, (2) speed of finding information, and (3) engagement and preference in seeking out these visualizations. We find that superfluous images can distract. But we find no user costs - and some intriguing benefits - when pictographs are used to represent the data. 
Bio: 
Steve Haroz researches how the brain perceives and selects visual information. His goal is to use an understanding of the human visual system to inform visualization guidelines. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Psychology Department at Northwestern University.

Steve Haroz

ISOTYPE Visualization – Working Memory, Performance, and Engagement with Pictographs (S. Haroz, Northwestern University)

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) - back when it was named University of Illinois Chicago Circle (UICC) — the UIC Alumni magazine&rsquo;s Spring 2015 issue has a wonderfully nostalgic article titled &ldquo;The Circle&rdquo; by Daniel P. Smith that highlights 50 moments in the history of the campus. 
Number 49 on the list is the computer graphics imagery (CGI) created by the UICC Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL - known back then as the Circle Graphics Habitat) for the &ldquo;Attacking the Death Star Will Not be Easy&rdquo; sequence in the 1977 Star Wars film. 
<a href="http://www.uiaa.org/uic/news/uicalumni/uic_alumni_spring_2015_circle50.pdf">Read the UIC Alumni magazine&rsquo;s Spring 2015 article &lsquo;The Circle&rdquo;.</a> 
For additional information on EVL&rsquo;s Star Wars connection, see: 
<a href'https://www.evl.uic.edu/entry.php?id=1113">WTTW &ldquo;Star Wars Connection&rdquo;</a> 
<a href="https://www.evl.uic.edu/entry.php?id=1935">GRASS programming language</a> 
<a href="https://www.evl.uic.edu/entry.php?id=1167">George Lucas has deep roots in Chicago</a>

UIC Alumni Magazine (Spring 2015 / Circle)

(c) 2013. The Vector General system used to create the Deathstar debriefing scene for the 1977 Star Wars film.

As UIC celebrates 50 years, alumni list top 50 events: Star Wars CGI is one of them

EDITOR&rsquo;S NOTE: On May 5, 2015, Timothy L. Killeen, the new president of the University of Illinois, toured UIC accompanied by a reporter from the Chicago Tribune, and their first stop was the UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL). 
During his 50-minute visit, EVL graduate and undergraduate students, as well as staff and faculty, provided overviews of some of the lab&rsquo;s research and educational activities. Killeen, a leading researcher in geophysics and space science, was pleasantly surprised to discover that some of the technologies and tools he used in his research, such as the GeoWall, were developed by EVL. He seemed sincerely impressed with all EVL&rsquo;s current research efforts, and he warmly engaged each of the student presenters with questions about their work and interests. 
Chicago Tribune journalist Jodi Cohen shadowed Killeen for the day. Her article &ldquo;New U. of I. president optimistic about building team to tackle challenges,&rdquo; published May 15 online and May 16 in the newspaper, primarily focused on the budget concerns of the state&rsquo;s largest public university. However, her article also acknowledged that Killeen wants to be a &ldquo;student-centered&rdquo; president, and &ldquo;that desire was at the core of nearly every discussion Killeen had as he toured the UIC campus one day earlier this month. On that day, he met with new Chancellor Michael Amiridis, visited the high-tech electronic visualization lab, met with student leaders, and toured one of the campus&rsquo; community health clinics.&rdquo; 
<a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-university-of-illinois-new-president-met-20150515-story.html">Read the May 15, 2015 online article.</a> 
(Note: This article is accompanied by a slideshow of photos; EVL-relevant photos are reproduced here.) 
(1) 3-D brain. Wearing 3-D glasses, incoming President Timothy Killeen checks out images of a human brain that have been generated in the UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory&rsquo;s &dlquo;Cave.&rdquo; (Photo: Nancy Stone, Chicago Tribune) 
(2) Electronic Visualization Laboratory: Timothy Killeen, second from left, views an image of a lake in Antarctica as he visits the UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory. (Photo: Nancy Stone, Chicago Tribune) 
(3) UIC lab: Timothy Killeen visits the UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory in Chicago. (Photo: Nancy Stone, Chicago Tribune)

ChicagoTribune_Killeen_16May2015

UIC lab: Timothy Killeen visits the UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory in Chicago. (Photo: Nancy Stone, Chicago Tribune)

New U of I President Killeen visits UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory as part of a campus tour

EVL PhD candidate, Michael Lewis presents his thesis research: 
Thursday, May 14, 2015, 11:00 AM 
EVL Cyber-Commons 
Room 2068 ERF 
Abstract 
Many large scale clustered systems have incorporated infrastructure for processing Resource Description Framework (RDF) data in order to provide greater semantics and finer access to the data. As the amount of RDF data expands at a rapid pace, is critical to have query systems be able to process in scale and to provide users with new ways to correlate linked data. Much research has been done to distributively process and retrieve linked data from conjunctive queries, however the current research and the existing frameworks has only been shown to scale on clusters with a limited size. Query languages have been developed to formulate triple-pattern based expressions and limited path expressions for retrieving properties and graph primitives covering a specified path, however these queries are made for a limited scale framework and there are no RDF query languages that can cover a range of connectedness expressions. This research introduces an in-memory approach to processing and retrieving RDF queries that can scale to thousands of machines within a super-computer environment. In addition this research specifies an approach for the user to query key/URI correlations.

M. Lewis, PhD candidate

A Path Approach to Processing and Retrieving Large Scale Linked Data within a Super-Computing Environment

Kate Keahey, Senior Fellow of the Computation Institute, University of Chicago, and a Scientist in the Mathematics and Computer Science Division of Argonne National Laboratory presents her research in cloud computing infrastructure and services at EVL. 
Wednesday, May 3, 2015. 1:00PM 
EVL Cyber-Commons, Room 2068 ERF 
Chameleon Open Science Cloud 
Cloud computing services have become critical to all major 21st-century economic activities - yet, we are only beginning to understand this new important paradigm. Questions persist regarding applicability of the cloud platform to emergent data-intensive and sensor-based applications, its suitability for high-performance computing (HPC) applications, and its potential to leverage major emergent technologies such as Software Defined Networking (SDN). Answering these questions requires the ability to perform experiments at scale - in other words, an experimental testbed that can support experimentation with Big Data, Big Compute, and Big Instrument problems. 
This talk introduces the NSF-funded Chameleon project that will provide such a large-scale platform to the open research community, allowing its users to explore transformative concepts in deeply programmable cloud services, design, and core technologies. Its high reconfigurability will allow users to work on challenges ranging from the creation of Software as a Service to kernel support for virtualization. The talk describes the areas research and types of experiments the testbed will support, hardware facilities it will offer, supported modes of user interaction with this facility, as well as rollout timeline. 
Bio: 
Keahey is one of the pioneers of infrastructure cloud computing. She created and leads the development of the Nimbus project, recognized as the first open source Infrastructure-as-a-Service implementation, and engages in many application projects popularizing the use of the cloud computing platform in science. She also leads the Chameleon project, a distributed experimental platform for cloud computing research.

Nimbus and Chameleon Presentation Slides

Kate Keahy, ANL

&ldquo;Chameleon&rdquo; Science Cloud - Kate Keahy, Argonne National Laboratory

EVL visting scholar and professor at the University of Amsterdam, Dr. Cees de Laat presents research conducted by the System and Network Engineering (SNE) laboratory in the Informatics Institute of the Faculty of Science 
Tuesday, May 5, 2015 
11:00 am 
Science & Engineering Offices 
851 S. Morgan, Room 1000 
Abstract: The landscape of cyberinfrastructure for research is rapidly changing. There is a move towards virtualized and programmable infrastructure. The cloud paradigm enables applications to use computing resources at different places and optimize workflows in either bringing computing to the data or the other way around. Programmable networks allow networks to be utilized in unprecedented ways to create application-specific Internets. This talk presents the latest developments in the Research and Education Networks to support Big Data sciences. 
<a href="http://delaat.net/talks/cdl-2015-05-05.pdf">Download Presentation Slides</a> 
Biography: Professor de Laat chairs the System and Network Engineering (SNE) laboratory in the Informatics Institute of the Faculty of Science at University of Amsterdam. Research in his group ranges from optical and switched networking and workflows for processing of big data in PetaScale e-Science applications, Semantic Web to describe e-infrastructure resources, information complexity, Authorization architectures and Systems Security & privacy of information in distributed environments. Prof. de Laat serves on the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Policy Board on matters regarding ESnet, is co-founder of the Global Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF), founder of GRIDforum.nl and founding member of CineGrid.org. His group is/was part of EU projects SWITCH, CYCLONE, ENVRIplus and ENVRI, EuroBrazil, Geysers, NOVI, NEXTGRID, EGEE, and others. He is a member of the Advisory Board Internet Society Netherlands and Scientific technical advisory board of SURF Netherlands. 
<a href="http://delaat.net/">See a snapshot of his scientific career.</a>

Professor Cees de Laat, University of Amsterdam

Developments in Smart and Secure Cyber Infrastructure for Science

Victor Mateevitsi, a PhD student in the Computer Science Department and a Research Assistant in the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), is a recipient of the Dean&rsquo;s Scholar Award, presented by the Dean of the UIC Graduate College in recognition of a student&rsquo;s scholarly achievement. 
This award, given to UIC&rsquo;s most distinguished doctoral students, provides a one-year fellowship stipend and tuition and fee waivers, to enable these students to dedicate their time to complete their dissertation work. 
Mateevits&rsquo;s chosen research is in Human Augmentics and Sensory Augmentation; that is, he is studying how wearable technologies and body sensors affect people&rsquo;s perception of the world around them and, more specifically, how these devices can improve one’s awareness in complex environments. Immediate applications that have broad impact vary from protecting soldiers, firemen and policemen in hostile environments, to providing better quality of life to the visually and hearing impaired. 
Though wearable technologies are his focus, Mateevitsi has also been involved with a variety of EVL research projects, from high-performance visualization system development to translational research with the UIC Pathology department and the City of Chicago. He has had summer internships at two Hollywood animation studios and this summer, will have an internship at Microsoft Research. He also volunteers his time to mentor underserved youth in an after-school programs, assists with EVL tours and demos, and gives numerous presentations and interviews to educate the general public on technology. 
In 2013, Mateevitsi was named one of the &ldquo;Fifty for the Future&rdquo; by the Illinois Technology Foundation and in 2014, he was selected as one of the &ldquo;20 in their 20sr&rdquo; by Crain&rsquo;s Business magazine. 
<a href="http://grad.uic.edu/fellowships-awards/deans-scholar-award-winners">Winners of this year’s Dean&rsquo;s Scholar Award</a>

Victor Mateevitsi, EVL PhD Candidate

UIC/EVL Victor Mateevitsi Receives 2015 UIC Dean&rsquo;s Scholar Award

Jillian Aurisano, a PhD student in the Computer Science Department and a Research Assistant in the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), is a recipient of the 2015 UIC Chancellor&rsquo;s Student Service and Leadership Award (CSSLA). The awards were announced on April 9, 2015. 
The CSSLA program recognizes outstanding student leaders and student volunteers who, while maintaining high academic achievement, demonstrate a commitment to the UIC community through participation in student organizations and campus activities, and in the greater Chicagoland area through active service and community engagement. 
Aurisano is a past president and a current passionate and vital member of the UIC Women in Computer Science (WiCS) organization. She also served as Treasurer of the Computer Science Graduate Student Council, and she participates in EVL computer science outreach activities. 
The CSSLA is the latest in several awards that Aurisano has received over the years in recognition of her outstanding service work. In 2012, she was the recipient of a Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship to encourage women to excel in computing and technology and become active role models and leaders in the field. Also in 2012, she received the Palantir Technologies for Women & Minorities in Computer Science scholarship to attend the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference.

Jillian Aurisano, EVL PhD Candidate

UIC/EVL Jillian Aurisano Receives 2015 UIC Chancellor&rsquo;s Student Service and Leadership Award

APRIL 22, 2015 - Andrew E. Johnson, UIC Computer Science associate professor and Electronic Visualization Laboratory director of research, participated in a panel discussion entitled &ldquo;Talking Science Fiction&rdquo; on WGCO (1590 AM radio in Evanston, Illinois). The Milt Rosenberg Program is a daily radio show that features intelligent, enlivening and thought provoking discussions centered on the world of ideas. The Program&rsquo;s website lists some of the ideas behind this show: &ldquo;Would we have smart phones without science fiction? Would we have ever dared to explore our galaxy, to dream of life on other planets? Probably not. Science Fiction has given birth to some of our greatest technologies, our greatest works of literature and, of course, some of our greatest films.&rdquo; 
Rosenberg, a professor emeritus at the University of Chicago and the 40-year host of the public affairs program Extension 720 on WGN Radio until 2012, was joined in the studio by Johnson and Gary Wolfe, a Humanities professor at Roosevelt University and a science fiction editor, critic and biographer. While Johnson has a deep interest in science fiction, Rosenberg explains that Johnson was invited to participate because he &ldquo;is a super computer guy and has everything to do with advancing science, thus advancing us in directions that perhaps science fiction has predicted, as well.&rdquo; 
To hear the podcast, go to: 
Show site: <a href="http://www.1590wcgo.com/shows/45-milt-rosenberg">http://www.1590wcgo.com/shows/45-milt-rosenberg</a> 
Podcast: <a href="http://hark.io/podcast/talking-science-fiction/">http://hark.io/podcast/talking-science-fiction/</a>

Associate Professor & EVL Director of Research, Andy Johnson

Andrew Johnson, UIC/EVL Director of Research, on Radio panel discussion &ldquo;Talking Science Fiction&rdquo;

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

Insight Through Images Presentation Slides

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

In the Loop: Maxine D. Brown

Thursday, April 9th 
11:00 am - noon 
Room 1000, SEO (851 S. Morgan) 
Dr. Tamara Munzner, professor University of British Columbia presents her perspectives on analyzing the design of visualization systems. 
ABSTRACT:
Computer-based visualization (vis) systems provide visual representations of datasets designed to help people carry out tasks more effectively. Visualization is suitable when there is a need to augment human capabilities rather than replace people with computational decision-making methods. The design space of possible vis idioms is huge, and includes the considerations of both how to create and how to interact with visual representations. Vis design is full of trade-offs, and most possibilities in the design space are ineffective for a particular task, so validating the effectiveness of a design is both necessary and difficult. Vis designers must take into account three very different kinds of resource limitations: those of computers, of humans, and of displays. Vis usage can be analyzed in terms of why the user needs it, what data is shown, and how the idiom is designed. This framework for analyzing the design of visualization systems will be discussed. 
BIOGRAPHY: 
Tamara Munzner is a professor at the University of British Columbia Department of Computer Science, and holds a PhD from Stanford. She has been active in visualization research since 1991 and has published over sixty papers and book chapters. Her book Visualization Analysis and Design appeared in 2014. She co-chaired InfoVis in 2003 and 2004, co-chaired EuroVis in 2009 and 2010, and is chair of the VIS Executive Committee. Her research interests include the development, evaluation, and characterization of information visualization systems and techniques. She has worked on problem-driven visualization in a broad range of application domains, including genomics, evolutionary biology, geometric topology, computational linguistics, large-scale system administration, web log analysis, and journalism. Her technique-driven interests include graph drawing and dimensionality reduction. Her evaluation interests include both controlled experiments in a laboratory setting and qualitative studies in the field. 
Host: Dr. A. Forbes & Dr. G.E. Marai

UBC CS Professor Dr. Tamara Munzner working on visualization of complex data-sets.

Visualization Analysis and Design, Dr. Tamara Munzner

Chicago, IL - March 26, 2015 
A five-year grant to develop an international Software Defined Networking Exchange (SDX) at the StarLight International/National Communications Exchange Facility was announced this week at the Global Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF) Technical Working Group biannual meeting in Washington DC, co-located with the Open Grid Forum, the Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) Engineering Conference (GEC 22), and the US Ignite Applications Summit – &ldquo;Beyond Today&rsquo;s Internet: Experiencing a Smart Future.&rdquo; A consortium of universities received funding to design, develop, and operate the StarLight SDX from the National Science Foundation (NSF) International Research Network Connections (IRNC) program. 
The StarLight SDX, located in Chicago, is part of an international effort to interconnect research and education networks that support Software Defined Networking (SDN), an innovative architecture that enables application communities, scientists, and engineers to directly program their networks to meet their precise requirements. SDN enables direct control over the network paths and attributes, which is an especially important capability for supporting extremely large scientific data flows. SDNs are proliferating, however, almost all are single domain oriented; SDXs will ensure that multiple SDN domains can interoperate. SDXs also provide enhanced visibility into individual data streams at exchanges and control over those streams. SDXs can also be customized to support the specific workflows of domain science research. 
The StarLight SDX, together with other SDXs worldwide, will support continued research, development, experimental deployment, and trials of multi-domain SDXs, and it will serve as an innovation platform on which to introduce next-generation services, architectures, policies, processes, and technologies. More specifically, the StarLight SDX will focus on three main activities: (1) development of the StarAX (StarLight Advanced eXchange) Innovation Engine, an SDN Development Environment that will enable facilities around the world to provide multiple network functions and features quickly and reliably, and to deploy SDXs that are compatible and interoperable with others, (2) deployment of an instance of this system at the StarLight Facility, and (3) providing coordination and assistance to others around the world to deploy such systems at their exchange points. This innovative exchange facility will be able to support a wide range of new international services and capabilities for global research and education. 
Led by the International Center for Advanced Internet Research (iCAIR) at Northwestern University, the consortium includes the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Qualcomm Institute division of Calit2 (Calit2-QI) at UC San Diego. The consortium also includes many international SDX partners, all of whom are founding members of the GLIF, which organized this week’s GLIF Technical Workshop. GLIF participants are National Research and Education Networks (NRENs), consortia and institutions involved in advanced optical networking and research, and are engaged in creating and exploring prototypes of multiple, innovative communication services and technologies. 
 The StarLight SDX initiative also builds on the efforts of early GENI projects, including a GENI SDX exchange and the International GENI (iGENI) initiative, which developed a unique distributed SDN/OpenFlow global infrastructure that supports research and development for next-generation network communication services and technologies. 
# # # # 
About the International Center for Advanced Internet Research <a href="http://www.icair.org">(iCAIR)</a> at Northwestern University 
The International Center for Advanced Internet Research (iCAIR) at Northwestern University accelerates leading-edge innovation and enhanced global communications through advanced technologies, in partnership with numerous international community, and national partners. iCAIR partners with EVL at University of Illinois at Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory, in collaboration with Canada&rsquo;s CANARIE and the Netherlands&rsquo; SURFnet, to manage and grow the StarLight optical network exchange. 
About the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago 
The Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago is an internationally renowned interdisciplinary research laboratory whose mission is to enable scientific and engineering discoveries by designing and developing high-performance visualization, virtual reality, and collaboration systems using global cyberinfrastructure. 
Established in 1973 as a joint effort of the UIC College of Engineering and School of Art and Design, EVL is the oldest formal collaboration between engineering and art in the U.S. EVL partners with iCAIR at Northwestern University and Argonne National Laboratory, in collaboration with Canada's CANARIE and the Netherlands' SURFnet, to manage and grow the StarLight optical network exchange. 
About <a href="http://www.calit2.net">Calit2-QI</a> at the University of California, San Diego 
The California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) represents a new mechanism to address large-scale societal issues by bringing together multidisciplinary teams of the best researchers (both on and beyond University of California campuses) in a way that had been impossible earlier. 
About the <a href="http://www.startap.net/starlight">StarLight</a> International/National Communications Exchange Facility 
With more than 30 100 Gbps connections, the StarLight International/National Communications Exchange Facility is the world's most advanced and highest capacity optically based networking exchange facility. StarLight provides advanced networking services and technologies that are optimized for high-performance, large-scale metro, regional, national and global applications.
With funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), StarLight was designed and developed by researchers, for researchers. StarLight is managed by the International Center for Advanced Internet Research (iCAIR) at Northwestern University, the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the Mathematics and Computer Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory, in partnership with Canada's CANARIE national networking organization and The Netherlands' SURFnet. 
About the <a href="http://www.glif.is">Global Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF)</a> 
The Global Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF) is an international virtual organization that promotes the paradigm of lambda networking (primarily using lightpaths on optical fiber). GLIF participants are National Research and Education Networks (NRENs), consortia and institutions working with lambdas. Participation in GLIF is open to any organization that subscribes to the GLIF vision and can contribute to the GLIF activities. 
Media Contacts: 
Joe Mambretti 
International Center for Advanced Internet Research (iCAIR) 
Northwestern University 
j-mambretti@northwestern.edu 
Maxine D. Brown 
Electronic Visualization Laboratory 
University of Illinois at Chicago 
maxine@uic.edu

The Global StarLight Software Defined Networking Exchange

StarLight Facility Chicago

The Global StarLight Software Defined Networking Exchange (SDX): A Novel Advanced International Communications Facility

On March 23, 2015, UI LABS announced a new initiative called &ldquo;CityWorks&rdquo; to address urban infrastructure challenges that face Chicago and cities across the world. UIC, and more specifically, the UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), are academic founding partners. Pete Nelson, dean of the UIC College of Engineering and professor of Computer Science, is a member of the Strategic Advisory Committee for the UI LABS&rsquo; CityWorks project. While EVL is not actively working on any CityWorks projects currently, UI LABS is extremely interested in collaborating with EVL on future projects. 
Chicago&rsquo;s precedence to open up its assets and infrastructure for urban technology experimentation provides a wealth of Big Data repositories that need to be mined, filtered, grouped, and compared. EVL can contribute by designing a robust Information Technology infrastructure (e.g., ultra-high-resolution visualization displays integrated with the &ldquo;cloud&rdquo;) and visual analytic software solutions to enable policy makers, industry infrastructure and service providers, law enforcement, educators and government officials to collaborate and access, share and display information in order to better understand the needs, solutions, investments in resources (time and funding) and improvements necessary for urban development, and to better communicate outcomes to the general public. 
UI LABS solves large-scale industrial challenges by forming consortia of university, industry and civic partners who innovate and commercialize new technology solutions. <a href="http://www.cityworks.uilabs.org/">CityWorks</a> addresses challenges to the built environment and will produce commercializable solutions in four key areas: energy management; physical infrastructure; water and sanitation systems; and transportation and logistics systems. 
# # # 
PHOTO: This is an example of ways EVL could contribute to CityWorks. Several years ago, EVL did a feasibility project with the City of Chicago to look at crime data overlaid on a Google Earth map of Chicago and displayed it in its CAVE2&trade; environment. City officials had been viewing maps on laptops or single displays, but the size and resolution of the CAVE2 enabled them to see relationships among several Chicago neighborhoods, not previously possible.

Google Earth map of Chicago displayed EVL&rsquo;s CAVE2&trade; environment.

UI LABS Announces CityWorks: UIC is a Founding Member

Wednesday, March 18, 2015 
1:00pm - 2:00pm 
Timothy Johnson, PhD, is a professor in the Department of Public Administration in the UIC College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs and the director of the UIC Survey Research Laboratory. His main areas of expertise include survey methodology and health behaviors in disadvantaged populations. Dr. Johnson will present methodologies for the design of surveys and user studies as they relate to overall research design. 
Dr. Johnson's written numerous papers concerned with various aspects of survey methods, and has edited or co-edited three books, including: Hard to Survey Populations (2014), Handbook of Health Survey Methods (2014), and Survey Methods in Multinational, Multiregional and Multicultural Contexts (2010). He has also served previously as Standard Chair for the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) and as President of the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research (MAPOR), and currently leads the Coordinating Committee for AAPOR’s Transparency Initiative.

Tim Johnson (UIC Survey Research Laboratory) Presents the Basics of Research Design, User Studies and Surveys

Professor Chris Brown, director of the Mills Center of Contemporary Music will be present &ldquo;Supercollider Software for Live, Interactive Performance and Improvisation&rdquo; at the March 2015 AES@UIC meeting to be held at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory&rsquo;s Cyber-Commons. This presentation will include an overview and live demos of original software optimized for live interactive performance and improvisation. 
Chris Brown is an internationally renown composer, pianist, and electronic musician; he creates music for acoustic instruments with interactive electronics, for computer networks, and for improvising ensembles. Collaboration and improvisation are consistent themes in his work, as well as the invention and performance of new electronic instruments. Supercollider provides the underpinnings for his current work and will be the focus of his presentation to the AES@UIC community.

AES@UIC March Meeting Announcement

Chris Brown

AES@UIC March Meeting - &ldquo;Supercollider Software for Live, Interactive Performance and Improvisation&rdquo;

Victor Mateevitsi is one of the speakers participating in this evening’s Innovation U, which is part of Chicago Inno&rsquo;s Winter Event Series, Polar Vor-Tech, organized in partnership with the Chicago Innovation Exchange. The Thursday, February 26, 2015 meet-up event spotlights Illinois university-based entrepreneurial-focused centers and initiatives. This event is SOLD OUT, indicating both the popularity of this series and the interest in the subject matter. 
Mateevitsi, a UIC Computer Science PhD student and Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) research assistant, will talk about his &ldquo;SpiderSense&rdquo; research project - a wearable suit that detects when the user is nearing another person, tree, door, or any other obstacle. He is one of a dozen speakers from startups and/or innovations being launched by local universities or run by students and post-grads. Other universities represented include University of Chicago, Northwestern, and Notre Dame. 
<a href="http://chicagoinno.streetwise.co/2015/02/17/innovation-u-introducing-chicago-innos-next-meetup/">More information on Innovation U.</a> 
Chicago Inno is the premier news source for urban innovators who are the future of their cities, and is owned and operated by Streetwise Media, a digital media and events company.

V. Mateevitsi, EVL PhD Candidate

UIC/EVL Victor Mateevitsi participates in Innovation U

EDITOR&rsquo;S NOTE: While most of us will enjoy watching the Academy Awards this coming Sunday evening, some Oscars were already presented to Hollywood celebrities recognized for Scientific and Technical achievements. These awards were given out at a black-tie event on February 8 in Hollywood by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and video excerpts from that event will be shown during Sunday night&rsquo;s broadcast. UIC computer science graduate student and Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) research assistant Victor Mateevitsi was fortunate enough to attend this year&rsquo;s Academy&rsquo;s Scientific and Technical Academy Awards program. 
Mateevitsi&rsquo;s impressions of the event are detailed in the UIC NEWS article &ldquo;And the Oscar goes to … Larry Hornbeck&rdquo; by journalist Christy Levy, published on February 19, 2015. 
Mateevitsi received an invitation to attend the Scientific and Technical Awards ceremony because he participated in the 2013 Academy Science and Technology Council&rsquo;s summer internship program and worked at Pixar Animation Studios. Mateevitsi explains in the article that &ldquo;They want to find the top engineering students and make sure they stay in the movie industry. They&rsquo;re afraid that Google, Facebook and other tech companies are taking all the talent.&rdquo; And, Mateevitsi is open to the idea of working for Hollywood. &ldquo;I&rsquo;d definitely be interested in creating the next generation of tools and methods for the film industry,&rdquo; he says. 
Many on the UIC campus know Mateevitsi&rsquo;s name because he has received recognition for several major projects in which he has been involved over the years, notably his work with the UIC Pathology department on tiled display walls and his thesis work that extends the SpiderSense project. 
<a href="http://news.uic.edu/and-the-oscar-goes-to-larry-hornbeck
">Read the UIC NEWS article.</a> 
Learn about Mateevitsi&rsquo;s 2013 summer internship at Pixar. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/news/ni55821541/">Read the Academy Science and Technology Council announcement.</a> 
<a href="https://www.evl.uic.edu/core.php?mod=4&type=4&indi=948">Learn more about Mateevitsi&rsquo;s work with UIC Pathology.</a> 
<a href="https://www.evl.uic.edu/entry.php?id=1098">Learn more about SpiderSense.</a>

Victor Mateevitsi and Vasia Rigou attend the Scientific and Technical Academy Awards.

UIC grad student Victor Mateevitsi attends Academy Awards for Scientific and Technical Awards

G. Elisabeta (Liz) Marai, PhD, has joined the faculty of the Computer Science Department and the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) as an associate professor. Liz&lsquo;s research interests span data visualization, computational modeling and medical imaging. At UIC, she is blending her research interests with EVL&lsquo;s initiatives; teaching computer graphics, visualization and HCI courses; working with students on several funded projects; and, mentoring and advising students. In addition, she continues to be involved with professional societies; she is co-chair of the BioVis 2015 conference, the premier venue in biology data visualization, and co-chair of the Doctoral Colloquium for IEEE Vis 2015, the premier conference that covers all aspects of visualization. 

Liz comes to EVL after spending a sabbatical at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, where she was a Research Faculty member. Prior to that, she held a Joint Assistant Professor position in the Department of Computational and Systems Biology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Pittsburgh. She received her PhD in Computer Science from Brown University, and received her MSc and BS from the Politehnica University of Bucharest in Romania. 

Liz&lsquo;s research explores novel geometric representations, computational modeling, and visual analysis tools required to simulate and analyze complex scientific phenomena. The tools and collaborations she has built have helped solve practical scientific problems in disciplines such as biology, orthopaedics, epidemiology, natural language processing, mechanical engineering and astronomy. She has encouraged broad use of these tools as well; for example, RuleBender, her open-source software package for biological models, was downloaded over 1000 times in 2012. 

Her passion for teaching is evident in her having received six teaching awards within the past five years as well as Outstanding Paper awards for refereed journal articles and peer-reviewed conference papers. While at Pittsburgh, Liz obtained National Science Foundation (NSF) grants to support undergraduate research, advised graduate students, and served as PhD advisor to several students, one of whom won an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Liz was also involved in K-12 workshops through Pitt&lsquo;s Technology Leadership Initiative and the Pitt Women in Computer Science organization. 

&ldquo;Liz&lsquo;s accomplishments in multidisciplinary scientific research, her strong teaching credentials and her commitment to broader outreach and engagement make her a perfect fit for EVL&lsquo;s interdisciplinary, collaborative culture,&rdquo; says EVL director Maxine Brown. &ldquo;We are very excited to have her join the EVL &lsquo;family&rsquo;.&rdquo; 

The feeling is mutual, and Liz is excited to be part of EVL. &ldquo;Collaborative work with researchers across different departments leads to richer computer science research, provides a mechanism for evaluating the usefulness and robustness of results, and enables stronger educational opportunities,&rdquo; she explains. 

At UIC, Liz looks forward to furthering her research in scientific, information and data visualization by working with computer science and engineering faculty members and students, as well as with the many domain sciences for which visualization systems are created. 

Welcome, Liz! 

See Liz&lsquo;s <a href="https://www.evl.uic.edu/marai/">research projects and publications</a>.

Liz Marai

EVL Announces New Faculty Member: G. Elisabeta Marai

EDITOR&rsquo;S NOTE: Network World, published by IDG (International Data Group) company, is the premier provider of information, intelligence and insight for Network and IT Executives. It&rsquo;s January 21, 2015 tech news briefing features the article &ldquo;10 cool network and computing research projects&rdquo; by Bob Brown, one of which is &ldquo;Articulate,&rdquo; a joint project of UIC computer science faculty members Barbara Di Eugenio (PI), Andy Johnson (co-PI) and Adjunct CS Professor Leland Wilkinson (co-PI), and University of Hawaii at Manoa computer science faculty member Jason Leigh (PI). 

In the article, under the subheading &ldquo;Picture Perfect Computers,&rdquo; Articulate is described as a &ldquo;conversational and interpretive computer that can create easy-to-digest visualizations from data based on natural language requests and common gestures like pointing.&rdquo; 

The article goes on to quote Andrew Johnson, director of research at UIC&rsquo;s Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL). &ldquo;Today, with big data, you really need to be using visualizations to help you figure out what it is you&rsquo;re looking at…Visualization should be interactive; a dynamic process. We want scientists to be able get ideas out there quickly.&rdquo; 

Other institutions mentioned in the article as doing &ldquo;cool projects&rdquo; include Microsoft, Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, Cornell, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Chicago, Rice, Ruhr-Universitat Bochum in Germany, MIT, Georgia Tech and University of Massachusetts Amherst. 

<a href="http://www.networkworld.com/article/2872645/education/10-cool-network-and-computing-research-projects.html">Read the Network World article.</a> 

Information for this article was excerpted from the December 17, 2014 <a href="http://news.uic.edu/draw-me-a-picture-say-scientists-computer-may-respond">UIC NEWS article &ldquo;Draw me a picture&rdquo;</a> by Jeanne Galatzer-Levy.

Events - 2015

UIC CS/EVL PhD student Jillian Aurisano receives 2015 UIC Chancellor’s Award Winner

University of Hawai’i Data Visualization Expert to Build Top System

Apple Executive Kevin Lynch Speaks at UIC’s Mid-year Commencement

UIC’s “Team Italy” participates in Chicago Hackathon for Wildlife challenge

The SAGE2™ BOF presentation at SC15 is now posted online.

Summer Internship Enables UIC/EVL Student to Work on Multi-Person Virtual Reality

Contact