Committee: Andrew Johnson (Chair and Advisor), Steve Jones, Robert Kenyon, Jason Leigh (University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa), Luc Renambot 
December 18, 2017, 3:00 pm - 5:00 pm 
Room 1000 SEO 
Abstract: 
An estimated 253 million people in the world are blind and visually impaired. Visual impairments can significantly lower one&rsquo;s quality of life as they hamper the ability to perform otherwise simple tasks, like cooking a meal, walking to the bedroom or enjoying the outdoors. Similarly, people working in high-risk low-visibility environments, like firefighters and soldiers, might temporarily lose their vision when they need it the most. And while Tactile Visual Substitution Systems have been designed to aid in situations with vision loss, their use in navigation scenarios is very limited. 
In this dissertation, I investigate and propose different environment-to-vibration mappings while assessing one&rsquo;s Situation Awareness. The proposed approaches seek to understand whether one&rsquo;s experience with a tactile display would affect their Situation Awareness and how different vibration configurations, patterns, and environment-to-vibration mappings would affect one&rsquo;s navigation. The results of this dissertation provide insight and design implications for creating more complex navigational tactile displays.

Doctoral Defense Announcement: &ldquo;Supporting Navigation with a Torso Wearable Tactile Display&rdquo;

CHICAGO - VGA announces its &rdquo;Chicago New Media 1973-1992&ldquo; exhibition, public program and catalogue, in partnership with Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois at Chicago November 1-December 15, 2018. This expansive project chronicles the under-recognized story of Chicago&rsquo;s contributions to new media art by artists at the University of Illinois at Chicago's (UIC) Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) and at Midway and Bally games from 1973-1992. Chicago New Media 1973-1992 will feature video game artifacts, new media technologies, historical photographs, game stills, playable video game consoles, and virtual reality modules. 
The exhibit, public program and catalogue are organized by VGA Gallery in partnership with Gallery 400 and the EVL. It is curated by SAIC Associate Professor of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation, Jon Cates with curatorial assistance by VGA Director of
Exhibitions and Programs Chaz Evans and Executive Director Jonathan Kinkley . The catalogue will contain new scholarship about this relatively unknown era in art history and original documentation of important artworks in the exhibit, many of which have never been photographed or studied. The education program will include a symposium of new media artists and scholars. The public of the Midwest and audiences of the Terra Foundation&rsquo;s Art Design Chicago initiative will benefit. 
For more information, see the press release pdf below. 
This project is funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art and is
part of Art Design Chicago, an exploration of Chicago's art and design
legacy, an initiative of the Terra Foundation for American Art with
presenting partner The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation

Chicago New Media 1973-1992 Press Release

Spiral PTL, Video, 1980

VGA Exhibition Tells Underrecognized Story Of New Media In Chicago

DECEMBER 4, 2017 - The evening of November 28, 2017, the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at University of Illinois at Chicago was the location of an Open House hosted by its industrial partner Mechdyne Corporation for the Chicago Urban River Edges Ideas Lab. The Ideas Lab consists of nine architectural firms with extensive experience designing award-winning riverfronts, public spaces, and parks around the world. Launched by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the Chicago Department of Planning and Development (DPD), and the Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC) earlier this year, the Ideas Lab was tasked with helping the city create new concepts and guidelines for extending Chicago&rsquo;s current and successful Riverwalk. 
Each of the nine firms submitted formal concept design proposals to the city in June 2017, which are currently on public display at EXPO 72, 72 E. Randolph, across the street from the Chicago Cultural Center. Along with the physical exhibition, WSP, a buildings engineering firm, with support from Comcast, produced digital exhibition components that included augmented and virtual reality experiences (viewed via cell phones). Additional installations used California company Owlized&rsquo;s virtual reality technology. 
Mechdyne, who has worked with UIC and EVL for decades, and licensed its CAVE&trade; and CAVE2&trade; virtual environment systems, is also involved with the Ideas Lab. They wanted the participants to see the city of Chicago, and their architectural designs, in a large collaborative virtual environment. Hence, the Open House at EVL and continual demos in CAVE2. Over 40 people attended from architectural and engineering firms as well as MPC. The 3D views of Chicago and their renderings, shown at scale, were very well received, and attendees also appreciated learning more about EVL and understanding how they might make use of both the Lab&rsquo;s technology and its talented students. 
More information on <a href="https://www.mechdyne.com/3d-visualization-and-virtual-reality.aspx">Mechdyne</a>. 
More information on the <a href="https://archpaper.com/2017/03/chicago-urban-river-edges-ideas-lab/
">Chicago Urban River Edges Ideas Lab</a>. 
More information on the public exhibition: 
<a href="https://archpaper.com/2017/09/future-chicago-river-lab/#gallery-0-slide-0">https://archpaper.com/2017/09/future-chicago-river-lab/#gallery-0-slide-0</a> 
<a href="https://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/dca/supp_info/expo_72.html">https://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/dca/supp_info/expo_72.html</a> (visitor information)

Mechdyne Corporation showing proposed Chicago riverwalk concept in the CAVE2 environment at the UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory.

Mechdyne Open House at UIC/EVL Showcases expanded riverwalk concepts for Chicago

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

SAGE2 9th Annual International SC BOF @ SC17

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

New, Advanced SAGE2 Features Being Demonstrated at SC17

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

SAGE2 BOF2017 PPT

SC17 SAGE2 BOF Presentation

SC17 SAGE2 BOF materials now posted online

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2017 - The President of the University of Illinois System, Timothy Killeen, this week led a delegation of ~18 University officials on a two-day visit to one of its campuses, the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). On the second day, the last stop, prior to a wrap-up meeting at University Hall, was to the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), a major research resource in the Computer Science Department. 
This trip was part of the President&rsquo;s Executive Leadership Program (PELP), whose objective is to broaden participants&rsquo; understanding of higher education issues and to strengthen their skill sets in leading and managing a public institution at the university or system level. The group travels to four meetings over a 12-month period; this year the trips include Washington DC (to meet with legislators and Federal funding agencies) and to sister campuses in Chicago, Urbana-Champaign and Springfield. 
PELP visits have a theme, and the theme of visiting the Chicago campus (UIC) was to learn about &ldquo;Leading a Public University in a 21st Century Global City.&rdquo; In their initial request to visit EVL, they asked to have students present their work. EVL simply complied - and in one hour, attendees received a compressed introduction of EVL&rsquo;s 44-year-old history from Director Maxine Brown, introductions from EVL-affiliated faculty (computer science, design and communications), introductions by PELP visitors, and nine virtual-reality, medical visualization, visual analytics, human augmentics and computer-supported collaboration demos - all presented by undergraduates, Masters and PhD students. 
The morning after the visit, a grateful email was sent by organizer Sarah Zehr, Assistant Vice President for Academic Affairs in the Office of the Executive Vice President/Vice President for Academic Affairs for the University of Illinois System. She thanked EVL for a &ldquo;phenomenal tour&rdquo; and said, &ldquo;Several of the Fellows mentioned how much they enjoyed seeing the work the students were doing. I was impressed you were able to get so many faculty and students together to provide a whirlwind overview of the capabilities of the lab. It was much appreciated!&rdquo; 
EVL Director Brown responded that its faculty, staff and students are &lsquo;family&rsquo;, so the energy, enthusiasm and pleasure that everyone takes in showcasing their work is genuine. Humorously, during the demos, while students presented - faculty mentors interjected and students in the audience where giving real-time input to their friends with hand signals. 
EVL appreciated the opportunity to show such distinguished attendees the breadth of its research activities and to hopefully stimulate more inter-campus collaborations in the future. 
# # # # 
ATTENDEES (not including EVL students): 
EVL Faculty Attendees: Andrew Johnson, CS; Robert Kenyon, CS; Liz Marai, CS; Luc Renambot, CS; Debaleena Chattopadhyay, CS; Dan Sandin, CS/Art; Daria Tsoupikova, Design; Steve Jones, Communications 
U of I Administration: Timothy Killeen, President; Barbara Wilson, Executive Vice President and Vice President for Academic Affairs 
2017 PELP fellows: 
UIC: Steve Everett, Dean, College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts; Fernando Howell, Director of Capital Planning and Project Management, Facility and Space Planning; Jerry Krishnan, Associate Vice Chancellor for Population Health Sciences, Vice Chancellor for Health Affairs; Michael Pagano, Dean, College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs; Clark Stanford, Dean, College of Dentistry; Nikos Varelas, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Affairs 
UIS (Springfield): Vickie Cook, Executive Director, Center for Online Learning, Research and Service; Lucía Vázquez, Associate Dean, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences 
UIUC: Paul Ellinger, Associate Chancellor and Vice Provost for Budget and Resource Planning, Office of the Provost; Cheryl Hanley-Maxwell, Dean, College of Applied Health Sciences; Robin Kaler, Associate Chancellor of Public Affairs; Kimberlee Kidwell, Dean, College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences; Sharee Robinson, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Research; William H. Sanders, Professor of Engineering and Head, Electrical and Computer Engineering 
University of Illinois Regional Campus at Peoria: Meenakshy Aiyer, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, College of Medicine, Peoria 
University Senates Conference: Harley Johnson, Professor and Associate Head of Graduate Programs, Department of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering, College of Engineering, UIUC

University of Illinois System PELP 2017 participants in UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory's (EVL) CAVE2&trade; Hybrid Reality Environment.

University of Illinois System 2017 PELP Program Visits the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL)

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

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

Today&rsquo;s UIC Open House welcomed prospective students, their parents, and the general public to tour the campus and learn more about the many academic programs offered. As part of the day&rdsquo;s events, the Computer Science department organized numerous faculty talks, a student panel, and campus tours, including CAVE2 demos from the UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL). &ldquo;Team EVL&rdquo; presented nine 20-minute demos, with 20-30 attendees each. Audiences were enthusiastic and asked lots of questions. Though tiring, a good time was had by all. 
Many thanks to EVL student volunteers (shown in the photo, left to right): Juan Trelles Trabucco, Chihua Ma, Tim Luciani, Andrew Burks, Krishna Bharadwaj, Vijayraj Mahida, Sai Jyothula, Nina Sakhnini, Isabel Lindmae and Bart Kupiec. Also participating were Maxine Brown, Andy Johnson and Luc Renambot.

EVL student volunteers

EVL hosts CAVE2 demos as part of Computer Science&rsquo;s activities for UIC Open House

September 14, 2017 - This year, UIC Computer Science (CS) PhD student and Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) research assistant Arthur Nishimoto received Honorable Mention for his &ldquo;Under the Virtual Ice&rdquo; image in the campus&rsquo;s 2017 Image of Research competition. This is the 10th anniversary of the interdisciplinary exhibit competition, and is organized by the UIC Graduate College and University Library to showcase the breadth and diversity of research at UIC. 
&ldquo;Under the Virtual Ice&rdquo; demonstrates how Nishimoto&rsquo;s research, under the supervision of CS associate professor and EVL director for research Andy Johnson, enables scientists to use a virtual-reality head-mounted display to visually and interactively explore data that has been collected under the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica. Funded by NASA, the SIMPLE project (Sub-ice Investigation of Marine and Planetary-analog Ecosystems) deployed an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) whose sensors collected biogeochemical data of the water&rsquo;s composition and photographed the underside the ice surface, and used sonar data to map the underside of the ice surface. More specifically, this photo shows the user holding a wand controller that enables him to virtually swim through the Ross Sea, follow the yellow path of the AUV, and view salinity, pressure, conductivity, and oxygen concentrations. The goal is to compare measurements of the ice shelf taken from under the ice with measurements taken from above the ice, to improve future mapping missions to Jupiter&rsquo;s ice-covered moon Europa, and eventually send an AUV under that ice to search for life. SIMPLE is a collaboration of UIC, Stone Aerospace, Georgia Tech, Louisiana State University, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, San Jose State, University of Texas at Austin, and Montana State University. 
An awards reception featuring the winners and the finalists for this year&rsquo;s 10th Anniversary exhibition will take place at the UIC Gallery 400 on October 24, 2017, from 4:00 - 6:00pm. Some of the winning entries from the past decade will also be on display. 
<a href="http://tinyurl.com/ior10">RSVP</a> 
All winning entries will be on exhibit at the UIC Daley Library (October 11, 2017 - January 31, 2018) and in the Library of Health Sciences, and will be featured on light pole banners around campus. Winners, finalists and a wide selection of other entries received for each year&rsquo;s competition will also be posted to an online gallery run by the <a href="http://collections.carli.illinois.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/uic_ior">Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI).</a> 
For information on the 2017 awards, as well as a list of all exhibition winners and finalists from the competition&rsquo;s inception, see: 
<a href="http://grad.uic.edu/image-research-exhibit">General information and list of winners over the years</a> 
<a href="http://grad.uic.edu/ior-results/2017">2017 winning entries</a> 
It should be noted that Image of Research judges used EVL&rsquo;s largest tiled display system, the CAVE2 hybrid reality environment, and EVL&rsquo;s windowing software SAGE2, to display all the submissions at once for easy comparison and grouping. 
# # # 
EVL students have participated in and received recognition in previous Image of Research competitions. Here is a summary of all EVL accomplishments to date: 
2016: 1st Place - &ldquo;SpiderSense,&rdquo; Victor Mateevitsi; Honorable Mention - &ldquo;Into the (Virtual) Jungle,&rdquo; Jillian Aurisano and James Hwang 
2014: Honorable Mention - &ldquo;Getting in Touch with the Data,&rdquo; Arthur Nishimoto 
2013: 1st Place - &ldquo;Threshold,&rdquo; Joshua Albers; 2nd place - &ldquo;A Nanoscale Forest Seen Through a Big Lens,&rdquo; Khairi Reda; Finalist - &ldquo;SpiderSense,&rdquo; Victor Mateevitsi, Brad Haggadone, Brian Kunzer 
2012: 1st Place - &ldquo;Artificially created cortical functional blood unit,&rdquo; Thomas Marrinan, Ian Gould 
2011: Honorable Mention - &ldquo;20 Foot Canvas&rdquo;, JD Pirtle, Arthur Nishimoto, Karan Chakrapani, Todd Silvia, and Philip Pilosi; Finalist - &ldquo;Cli-Mate,&rdquo; Ed Kahler 
2010: 1st Place - &ldquo;Avatar - A Virtual Human,&rdquo; Sangyoon Lee 
2009: Honorable Mention - &ldquo;The Viewer,&rdquo; Julio Obelleiro; Finalist - &ldquo;The Tight Room,&rdquo; Heejoo Kim 
2008: 1st Place - &ldquo;Infinity Gliders,&rdquo; AnnMarie Cernoch; 3rd Place - &ldquo;Rain on Mars,&rdquo; Dmitri Svistula

&ldquo;Under the Virtual Ice&rdquo; with Arthur Nishimoto, UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory.

UIC/EVL Student Recognized in 2017 UIC Image of Research Competition

SEPTEMBER 11, 2017 - UIC Computer Science (CS) Associate Professor G. Elisabeta (Liz) Marai loves to inspire and educate next-generation computer scientists. For several years now, she has selected the best and brightest undergraduates from her Fall and Spring courses and, pending financial support, offers them both summer research experiences and extracurricular activities to accelerate their knowledge of visualization and visual analytics technologies and techniques. 
Earlier this year, Marai reached out to CS faculty, and particularly CS faculty affiliated with the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), to ask if they would join her in hiring her undergrads on grants, with funding provided by the NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program or by private donors. While the students would be paid to work on a variety of projects, Marai would also provide them with extracurricular work - participating in the 12th Visual Analytics Science and Technology (VAST) Challenge, hosted annually by the international IEEE Visualization (VIS) conference. 
Months prior to the IEEE VIS conference, the VAST Challenge publishes several problems (a Grand Challenge and three Mini-Challenges) around one theme. This year, it focused on a fictitious mid-size city with a small industrial area located near a wildlife preserve, where it was discovered that the population of a specific local bird was decreasing. Each of the VAST problems provided different datasets, with different questions about &ldquo;who-what-where-why-when–how&rdquo;. For each problem, the goal was to design and develop specific visual analytics tools to help the local ornithologist determine what was happening to the birds. 
How do undergrad sophomores and juniors deal with such a competition? They work together in teams, and they learn a lot about visualization, visual analytics, programming, and web design and development. And, they are mentored by Marai&rsquo;s PhD/MS students, as well as other EVL faculty, staff and students. 
This year&rsquo;s VAST Challenge received 56 submissions from individuals and teams in industry, government, and academia. EVL student teams submitted three entries, one for each Mini-Challenge; two EVL submissions received Honorable Mention awards and one was well reviewed but did not receive an award. Given these submissions were led by undergraduates, most of whom had never done visualization before (most were students from Marai&rsquo;s CS342 software design course), that&rsquo;s a huge accomplishment! 
All the student teams wrote two-page papers about their entries that will be published in the IEEE VIS 2017 electronic conference proceedings. Marai will fund two students to attend this year’s IEEE VIS conference, to be held October 1-6, 2017 in Phoenix, AZ, to present their solutions, and to receive their Honorable Mention certificates on behalf of their teammates. 
 
# # # # # # 
 
Here is a summary of the three projects. 
Mini-Challenge #2: Honorable Mention for Clarity in Visual Communication 
Project: &ldquo;Mining Factory Pollution Data through a Spatial-Nonspatial Flow Approach&rdquo; 
UIC Participants: Undergraduates Joshua Castor, Joseph Borowicz and Andrew Burks; graduate students Manu Thomas and Timothy Luciani; and, faculty mentor Liz Marai. 
The dataset provided several months of meteorological data (wind speed and direction) and chemical data emitted by four industrial factories and captured by nine sensing stations. To explore the spatio-temporal chemical readings and wind data, specifically which factories emitted what chemicals and how the nine sensors in the area were performing, the team developed a web-based analytics tool with interactive visualizations and path line analysis to reveal sensor errors and chemical reading spikes, as well as pinpoint possible sources of chemical reading spikes. The goal was to help the local ornithologist determine whether or not the factories were compliant with environmental regulations. 
Mini-Challenge #3: Honorable Mention for Good Interactive Image Explorer for Temporal Analysis 
Project: &ldquo;Web-Based Interactive Image Explorer for Temporal Analysis of Satellite Images&rdquo; 
UIC Participants: Undergraduates Vijayraj Mahida, Bartosz Kupiec and Andrew Burks; graduate student Timothy Luciani; and, faculty mentor Liz Marai. 
The dataset provided satellite imaging data from commercial multi-spectral imagers that routinely cover the nature preserve every few weeks. The team developed a web-based image analysis tool that combined small, multiple views of satellite images, linked semantic zooming and image intensity histograms, along with filter controls. The goal was to help the local ornithologist interactively analyze spatio-temporal changes to understand the health of the wildlife preserve and alert him to possible conditions that might be impacting the birds. 
Mini-Challenge #1: No IEEE award, but kudos to the students for participating! 
Project: &ldquo;A Bespoke Analysis Tool for Spatio-temporal Park Traffic Data&rdquo; 
UIC Participants: Undergraduates Dimitar Kirilov, Isabel Lindmae and Andrew Burks; graduate student Chihua Ma; and, faculty mentor Liz Marai. 
The dataset provided resident and tourist vehicle traffic in the preserve, for day trips, overnight camping, etc., as a data stream with vehicle types and entry/exit timestamps. The team developed a web-based traffic-data analysis tool that consisted of two linked heat maps showing daily activity for vehicles, as well as a histogram showing the total time spent by vehicles in the park. Combined, these views enabled the analysis of both spatial and temporal patterns in the wildlife preserve, helping the local ornithologist identify traffic patterns, correlations, or anomalies to aid his investigations. 
 
# # # # # # 
 
The IEEE VIS 2017 VAST Challenge Awards are listed on the IEEE VIS 2017 website: 
<a href="http://ieeevis.org/year/2017/info/awards/vast-challenge-awards">http://ieeevis.org/year/2017/info/awards/vast-challenge-awards</a> 
The IEEE VIS VAST Challenge 2017 website: 
<a href=http://www.vacommunity.org/VAST+Challenge+2017>http://www.vacommunity.org/VAST+Challenge+2017</a> 
Note: At IEEE VIS 2016, Marai and EVL undergraduate and graduate students won Honorable Mention in the third International Data Visualization Contest organized by the IEEE Visualization and Graphics Technical Committee&rsquo;s (VGTC) Visualization Pioneers Group (VPG). See: <a href=" https://www.evl.uic.edu/entry.php?id=2247">https://www.evl.uic.edu/entry.php?id=2247</a>

Shown here: (back row, left to right) Manu Thomas, Dimitar Kirilov, Joseph Borowicz, Bartosz Kupiec, Vijayraj Mahida and Andrew Burks; (front row, left to right) Joshua Castor, G.E. Marai and Chihua Ma. Not pictured: Isabel Lindmae and Timothy Luciani.

UIC/EVL Receives Two Honorable Mentions in IEEE VIS 2017 VAST Challenge

UIC Computer Science mentors two DREU undergraduates to work on summer research project 
JULY 27, 2017 - Undergraduate students Taylor Day, from Texas A&M University, College Station, and Mariko Kamiya, from Swarthmore University, were selected to be part of this summer&rsquo;s Distributed Research Experiences for Undergraduates (DREU) program, sponsored by the Computing Research Association Committee on the Status of Women in Computing Research (CRA-W) and the Coalition to Diversify Computing, with support from the National Science Foundation. The DREU program provides undergraduates with the opportunity to be directly involved in a research project and interact with graduate students and professors on a daily basis. 
DREU matched the students with faculty mentor Debaleena Chattopadhyay, an assistant professor in the UIC Computer Science Department and its Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL). Given her expertise in human-computer interaction, she assigned Day and Kamiya a project: to study smartphone ease of use by older adults. More specifically, how accessible are smartphone map applications for people aged 65 and older? And, is there a better way to design a mobile map application that considers the effects of old age, such as decreased motor skills, worsening eyesight, and limited cognitive processing skills? This is an area that is little studied, yet 42% of adults aged 65+ own a smartphone in the U.S. in 2017. 
In their 10-week summer internship, Day and Kamiya conducted a think-aloud user study with more than 12 older adults (for which they had applied for, and received, Institutional Review Board [IRB] approval), analyzed design requirements, learned web development, and prototyped a better application that integrated a probabilistic function to combat limited fine-motor skills during panning and zooming touchscreen maps. In what little spare time they had left, they even managed to explore Chicago a bit. 
Though Day and Kamiya gave a presentation of their findings to other EVL students, staff and faculty on the last day of their internship at UIC, they are far from done. Chattopadhyay has plans for them to write and submit a short paper to a professional conference. And, Day submitted a poster proposal to the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference on her mathematical contributions to the mobile application prototype, which was accepted. Subsequently, she applied to the CRA-W Grace Hopper Celebration Research Scholars Program for travel support, and will find out if she is accepted in mid-August. 
The DREU program requires its students to keep a Blog of their experiences. To learn more about Day&rsquo;s and Kamiya&rsquo;s experiences doing research at UIC and exploring the city of Chicago, see: 
<a href="https://tmacday.wordpress.com/">Taylor Day Blog</a> 
<a href="https://mkamiyadreu.wordpress.com/">Mariko Kamiya Blog</a> 
For more information on the DREU program, see: <a href="http://cra.org/cra-w/dreu/">http://cra.org/cra-w/dreu/</a>

DREU students Mariko Kamiya (left), Taylor Day (right) with faculty mentor Debaleena Chattopadhyay, UIC Computer Science/EVL assistant professor (center); project "Understanding Accessibility of Touchscreen Maps for Older Adults,” Summer 2017

Understanding Accessibility of Smartphone Map Applications for Older Adults

EVL PhD Candidate, Timothy Luciani presents his research &ldquo;Contextual Similarity Abstraction Techniques for Spatial Data Analysis&rdquo; during his preliminary exam. 
Date: Thursday July 13, 2017 
Time: 10:00am 
Room: ERF 2068 (Cybercommons) 
Committee: Dr. G. Elisabeta Marai (Chair), Dr. Robert Kenyon, Dr. Andrew Johnson, Dr. Angus Forbes, Dr. Klaus Mueller (Stony Brook University, NY) 
Abstract: 
Comparative analysis of modern large-scale datasets is a core task in scientific visualization. This task entails identifying both global similarities among entire data collections, and local similarities between smaller data subsets to help provide critical insights into data trends and potentially lead to classification, validation and discovery. To this day, Shneiderman&rsquo;s visual information-seeking mantra remains the most common approach to designing comparative visualization applications: Overview first, zoom and filter, then details on demand. However, for large-scale datasets, this mantra becomes infeasible due to the high volume (number of entries and dimensionality) of the data. Van Ham and Perer explore an alternative, context-based model that emphasizes the use of contextual information as a means of data reduction: Search, show context, expand on demand. While powerful, this paradigm has not been well studied outside the domain of large-scale, dense graphs. Specifically, little is known on how well this approach transfers to domain-specific, datasets that are heterogeneous, spatially and statistically dense yet locally sparse, and possess spatial/non-spatial properties. 
To help explore this problem space, I propose a set of comparative analysis techniques which extend the Van Ham and Perer paradigm to spatial, scientific data. These techniques employ a blending of derived, quantitative similarity metrics and high-density visual abstractions - implemented through various integrated systems - to handle the inherent global data density and local attribute sparsity found in these datasets. Each of these approaches improves the likelihood of discovering patterns and similarities by first limiting the data to a user-defined subset before providing abstracted, contextual overviews.

&ldquo;Contextual Similarity Abstraction Techniques for Spatial Data Analysis&rdquo;

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

SAGE2 Keynote at Brazilian Symposium on Collaborative Systems

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

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

Inside a Real Life Holodeck

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

Pervasive Displays 2017

May 25, 2017 marks the 40th anniversary of the theatrical release of the first &ldquo;Star Wars&rdquo; movie. To celebrate the occasion, and to highlight Chicago&rsquo;s unique connection to the film, the Chicago Tribune published an in-depth and thoughtful article by features writer Chris Borrelli on May 23, 2017, titled &ldquo;Blueprints for &lsquo;Star Wars&rsquo; Death Star were created at UIC.&rdquo; <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/movies/ct-star-wars-evl-lab-ent-0524-20170523-column.html"> See the Tribune article.</a> 
<a href="https://youtu.be/i_gUIfFot-A">See the YouTube video.</a> 
Borrelli writes that the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) &ldquo;has a small but curious cameo in the first &lsquo;Star Wars&rsquo; movie - the Death Star battle plans that are presented were created there, by a small group of programmers and animators in 1976&rdquo; (for the film&rsquo;s release in 1977). 
At that time, traditional special effects were primarily done using optical (photographic) and mechanical (physical) techniques; computer generated imagery was in its infancy. The &ldquo;Star Wars&rdquo; movie&rsquo;s special effects were done traditionally, except for one brief scene - a computer model of the Death Star that is viewed by the Rebel Alliance in their briefing room as they try to determine the best way to destroy it. 
California artist Larry Cuba wanted to bid on the computer graphics, but commercial software was either non-existent or proprietary, and hardware was expensive. So, Cuba approached Tom DeFanti, a computer graphics pioneer, computer science professor and co-founder of EVL, and asked to use lab&rsquo;s hardware and software to create the film&rsquo;s content. 
Though the scene took months to generate, its legacy has lasted decades. &ldquo;Star Wars&rdquo; came out years before Lucas created Industrial Light &amp; Magic, and years before he created its precursor, the Lucasfilm Computer Graphics Research Group, which ultimately became Pixar. 
DeFanti, interviewed for this article, says &ldquo;And now, [Star Wars] is the story of my life, this pleasant thread. Whenever I give a lecture, no matter what it&rsquo;s about, I&rsquo;m someone who worked on &lsquo;Star Wars.&rsquo; I mean, who would have thought, in 1977, of all the things developed at the lab in Chicago, the one small piece of a film we contributed to, a movie none of us expected to be significant, would help fund a lot of people to do a lot of (computer animation).&rdquo; 
Maxine Brown, current EVL director, is proud of the lab&rsquo;s role in the movie. &ldquo;Of course, it&rsquo;s wonderful,&rdquo; she says, &ldquo;but it can date you - when they suggest that the last thing you did was develop the Death Star.&rdquo; And, Cuba, a computer art pioneer, states, &ldquo;I make experimental computer-animated films…There are maybe 1,000 people familiar with my films and 10 billion who know the other thing.&rdquo; 
Steve Heminover, who worked at EVL as a UIC undergraduate when Larry Cuba was there, was able to keep the computer graphics hardware, software and associated data files from the scrap heap as the equipment aged - and, more serendipitously, was able to restore and make it operational. This article contains a video clip by Tribune photographer Chris Sweda, in which Heminover demonstrates the working computer system. And, as the Death Star&rsquo;s blueprints rotate on the old vector display, Heminover plays the briefing room scene from the original movie on his smartphone in the foreground. 
May the Force continue! 
# # # # # # # 
In Spring 2015, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of UIC, the Alumni magazine published the article &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 &ldquo;Star Wars&rdquo; imagery created by UIC/EVL. 
<a href="https://www.evl.uic.edu/documents/uic_alumni_spring_2015_circle50.pdf">https://www.evl.uic.edu/documents/uic_alumni_spring_2015_circle50.pdf</a> 
Steve Heminover is a recipient of the 2007 UIC Alumni Association&rsquo;s Achievement Award for his pioneering contributions to the growth of the laser display industry. 
<a href="http://archive.news.uic.edu/releases-2002-2012/1974-alumni-association-honors-uic-alumni-for-professional-achievement.html">http://archive.news.uic.edu/releases-2002-2012/1974-alumni-association-honors-uic-alumni-for-professional-achievement.html</a>

UIC graduate and Aura Technologies President Steve Heminover holds a phone with a scene from the original “Star Wars” beside an image of the Death Star on the computer that was used to create digital effects for a small part of the 1977 film.

Blueprints for 'Star Wars' Death Star were created at UIC

May 15, 2017 - Though students graduate, faculty retires, and staff moves on to new jobs, we have an expression that &ldquo;No one ever leaves EVL.&rdquo; That&rsquo;s because during its 44 year history, the faculty, staff and students of the UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) are more family than fleeting acquaintances, and form lifelong friendships, stay connected through social media, attend the same conferences, and occasionally visit the EVL &ldquo;mothership&rdquo; and become role models for current students. 
The latter happened a week ago, when two former EVL computer science students returned to campus to participate in the UIC College of Engineering (COE) Commencement on May 6, 2017. <a href="http://www.evl.uic.edu/trina">Trina Roy</a>, now a Senior Software Developer at Pixar Animation Studios, was invited to give the COE Commencement address. <a href="http://klynch.com/">Kevin Lynch</a>, Vice President of Technology at Apple, received an honorary doctorate of engineering for his contributions to society as one of the world’s preeminent software developers and technology innovators, including leading the software development team for the Apple Watch. Lynch was the speaker at the UIC midyear undergraduate commencement in December 2015. 
Roy, who received her MS in Computer Science (CS) in 1995, worked as an EVL research assistant under Tom DeFanti, EVL co-founder and UIC distinguished professor emeritus. She has worked in the film industry for many years on a number of films, many of which received Oscars, including &ldquo;Shrek,&rdquo; &ldquo;King Kong,&rdquo; &ldquo;Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,&rdquo; &ldquo;The Dark Knight Rises&rdquo; and &ldquo;Inception.&rdquo; She credits EVL&rsquo;s focus on art and science with having had a huge impact on how she learned computer graphics and how she cultivated her creative side, which in turn influenced her professional career and her personal friendships. 
Lynch, who attended UIC 1984-86, was a CS undergraduate and also studied interactive computer graphics under DeFanti. In a 2013 interview, when he was CTO of Adobe, he was quoted in the Blog of Appliness, saying: &ldquo;To me, creative expression is technical, and at the same time technology opens new doors to creativity. I learned this early on as I worked for a time as a member of the EVL in college. I was an engineer sitting at a workbench right next to artists using the software we developed.&rdquo; 
The day before Commencement, both Lynch and Roy agreed to meet with COE students, primarily undergraduates though all were welcome, for a Student Q&A that was held in EVL&rsquo;s Cyber-Commons classroom. Students asked Lynch everything from tips on entrepreneurship to whether he ever met Steve Jobs - he did - and what was he like - creative and open to new ideas. Roy was asked what her favorite movie was that she worked on - she liked them all - and what she did in her spare time - photography and hiking! One student thanked her for working for Pixar and creating such enjoyable animated movies. Though Roy and Lynch had never met before, they were clearly EVL kindred spirits, giving similar responses to questions they were jointly asked, and both saying how lessons learned at EVL greatly influenced their lives and careers. 
<a href="https://youtu.be/ES6avmbRChM?t=35m35s">View Roy&rsquo;s UIC College of Engineering Commencement Speech.</a> 
<a href="https://youtu.be/ES6avmbRChM?t=1h7m12s">View Lynch&rsquo;s Honorary Doctorate Degree Acceptance Speech.</a>

UIC College of Engineering (COE) alumni Kevin Lynch and Trina Roy participate in a Student Q&A at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) the day before COE Commencement. Both worked at EVL when they were students.

No One Ever Leaves EVL

EVL PhD Candidate, Michael J. Lewis defends his thesis &ldquo;A Distributed Graph Approach for Retrieving Linked RDF Data Using Supercomputing systems&rdquo;: 
UIC / EVL 
842 W. Taylor Street, Room 2068 (EVL Cybercommons) 
Chicago, IL 60607 
312.996.3002 
Date: Friday, April 21, 2017, 1PM 
Committee: Andrew Johnson (advisor and chair), Ugo Buy, Ajay Kshemkalyani, Jason Leigh (University of Hawaii, Manoa), Venkatram Vishwanath (Argonne National Laboratory) 
Graph systems play a dominant role in discovering relationships and patterns over large unstructured data in which data does not explicitly declare its meta-data. Graph analytics through queries, has been increasingly used in the business and research community alike in the areas of biomedical research and genome sequencing, disease research, social media and gaming networks, financial services, IT security - enhancing networks against cyber attacks, and in pharmaceuticals - helping to discover patterns from drug interactions. The Research Descriptive Framework, a graph based,data model is used by many graph systems in order to effectively create graph structures that are queryable for relational based and graphical based queries. My research looks at the ways pre-processing linked data into memory can improve query retrieval timings over a range of query types, as compared to a solely graph explorational method. In this dissertation I review RDF systems that retrieve queried RDF data from a relational, table based approach, an iterative data merge approach using Map-Reduce, and from a graph explorational approach. I introduce the work called Mantona, which is a distributed RDF system used within a supercomputing environment. I explain in detail, the workings of two different algorithms implemented in Mantona using MPI. The first algorithm (graph-cache) algorithm stores partial joins into a graph in order to expedite query retrievals. The second algorithm (graph-retrieval) retrieves a query by exploring RDF graph nodes. I conclude by presenting results generated from Mantona covering the graph-cache approach and the graph-retrieval approach, and in showing the range of queries in which a graph-cache implementation improves query retrieval timings over a solely explorational, graph-retrieval implementation.

A Distributed Graph Approach for Retrieving Linked RDF Data Using Supercomputing systems

EDITOR&rsquo;S NOTE: The March 27, 2017 edition of Crain&rsquo;s Chicago Business has a front page article featuring Dr. Pete Nelson, Dean of the UIC College of Engineering (COE). His portrait, which takes up more than half the page, was photographed at the UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory. Nelson is standing in the CAVE2&trade; Hybrid Reality System in front of colorful connectome data provided by the UIC Psychiatry department. 
The article, &ldquo;How UIC is making room for a computer science boom&rdquo; by journalist John Pletz, focuses on UIC&rsquo;s burgeoning computer science enrollment, which became the largest major in the COE this year and is the fastest-growing program on campus. The article looks at national trends in undergraduate computer science enrollment, which has more than tripled between 2006 and 2015, and how UIC&rsquo;s growth compares locally with Northwestern University and University of Chicago, as well as its sister institution, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It also talks about UIC&rsquo;s close proximity to the fast-growing Fulton Market district that&rsquo;s home to Google and dozens of tech companies. 
Along with its location, Nelson brags about some of UIC&rsquo;s strength, notably in cybersecurity, data mining and data visualization. He is committed to supporting and facilitating UIC&rsquo;s engineering growth. U of I&rsquo;s Board of Trustees just gave final approval to build a $34-Million 50,000-square-foot engineering building with ​labs and office space; it's the first new UIC academic building since 1991. In addition, Nelson wants to build a 168,000-square-foot home for computer science by 2021 and is in the process of raising funds. Journalist Pletz writes, &ldquo;given the financial condition of the state, which has $13 billion in overdue bills and hasn&rsquo;t passed a complete budget in nearly two years...the irresistible force that is demand for computer science talent is greater than the immovable object that is political gridlock.&rdquo; The article concludes with a statement from Nelson stating, &ldquo;Our job is to provide students access to excellence. To maintain that access, we have to grow.&rdquo; 
<a href="http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20170324/ISSUE01/170329891/uic-expanding-space-for-booming-computer-science-department
">Read the Crain&rsquo;s article.</a>

The front page of Crain&rsquo;s Chicago Business, March 27, 2017. Peter Nelson, dean of UIC&rsquo;s College of Engineering, in the school&rsquo;s Electronic Visualization Laboratory.

Crain&rsquo;s newspaper features &ldquo;How UIC is making room for a computer science boom&rdquo;

&ldquo;SwordPlots: Exploring Neuron Behavior within Dynamic Communities of Brain Networks,&rdquo; authored by Ma, C., Forbes, A. G., Llano, D. A., Berger-Wolf, T., Kenyon, R. V. was recognized by the Society for Imaging Sciences and Technology as the recipient of the 2017 Charles E. Ives Journal Award. 
The Charles E. Ives Award is given in recognition of an outstanding contribution in the area of basic or applied science or engineering published in a Society journal (JIST or JEI) during the preceding calendar year.

Flow diagram: (a) mouse brain, (b) camera, (c) time-series imaging data of mouse brain slices, (d) generate dynamic communities using DNA and (e) present the analysis results using the SwordPlots visualization.

EVL PhD Candidate Chihua Ma Receives Charles E. Ives Journal Award

EVL MS candidate Juan Trelles Trabucco presents his masters thesis research &ldquo;CAVE2 comparison of 1st & 3rd user perspectives in virtual motor rehabilitation tasks&rdquo;: 
UIC / EVL 
842 W. Taylor Street, Room 2068 (EVL Cybercommons) 
Chicago, IL 60607 
312.996.3002 
Date: Wednesday, March 8, 2017, 3pm 
Committee: Elisabeta Marai (advisor and chair), Jim Patton (Bioengineering), Robert V. Kenyon 
Abstract: 
Strokes are the leading cause of severe longstanding impairments in the US. In this context, virtual rehabilitation appears as an additional support to traditional treatments by taking advantage of virtual reality (VR). However, researchers do not agree on which aspects of VR are more relevant for specific therapies. One of these aspects is the user perspective. Rehabilitation applications mostly use first-person perspective or third-person perspective but do not compare the effect of both of them in a particular task. 
We performed a user study (N=30) in the CAVE2 environment with the application RehabJim, a virtual rehabilitation game for upper limbs recovery. Our research compared the effect of the user perspective, exercise modes, and two target sizes on user performance, the degree of immersion and body movements. Results suggested an effect of the exercise mode, and a smaller effect of the user perspective on time required to finish a task, hand movements, and movement corrections. User perspective had the main effect on head movements. Finally, the subjects felt the same immersion level under both user perspectives.

CAVE2 comparison of 1st & 3rd user perspectives in virtual motor rehabilitation tasks

In recognition of his work to develop next generation networks, advance the mission of Calit2 and shape collaborations across organizations, CENIC recognizes Tom DeFanti, an internationally recognized pioneer in visualization and virtual reality technologies at Calit2, University of California San Diego, as the recipient of the 2017 Innovations in Networking Award for Outstanding Individua Contributions. 
Tom&rsquo;s commitment to advance both technology and the common good is evident to all who are fortunate to work with him. Maxine Brown has worked with Tom DeFanti since 1977, and is now Director of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago, which Tom co-founded with art professor Dan Sandin in 1973. Maxine recalls that &ldquo;Advanced networking was an obvious extension of Tom&rsquo;s passion for real-time interactive computer graphics, with emphasis on &lsquo;real time&rsquo; whether images and animations are viewed locally or over distance.&rdquo; 
See the Document below to read the full CENIC press release.

CENIC Innovations Awards | Tom DeFanti

Tom DeFanti, EVL Director Emeritus Awarded CENIC&rsquo;s 2017 Innovations in Networking Award

Alessandro Febretti presents his PhD research in developing a model of an operating system for Hybrid Reality Environments, called Omegalib. 
Friday, March 3, 2017, 2pm 
EVL Cybercommons - 2068 ERF 
Committee: Andrew E. Johnson (Chair), Robert B. Kenyon, Luc Renambot, Leilah B. Lyons, Michael E. Papka (Argonne National Lab) 
Abstract: 
In the domain of large-scale visualization instruments, Hybrid Reality Environments (HREs) are a recent innovation that combines the best-in-class capabilities of immersive environments, with the best-in-class capabilities of ultra-high-resolution display walls. HREs create a seamless 2D/3D environment that supports both information-rich analysis as well as virtual-reality simulation exploration at a resolution matching human visual acuity. Collaborative research groups in HREs tend to work on a variety of tasks during a research session (sometimes in parallel), and these tasks require 2D data views, 3D views, linking between them, and the ability to bring in (or hide) data quickly as needed. Addressing these needs requires a matching software infrastructure that fully leverages the technological affordances offered by these new instruments. 
In this dissertation, I detail the requirements of such infrastructure and outline the model of an operating system for Hybrid Reality Environments. I present an implementation of core components of this model, called Omegalib. I show how this implementation has been successfully used to create HRE visualizations for research, education and outreach. One key feature of Omegalib is its ability to support multiple applications running simultaneously on an HRE. This is a significant improvement compared to classic immersive systems, which normally support a single application at a time. HREs (and large displays in general) are ideal systems to support co-located collaboration, and the ability to run and control multi-application workspaces is key to effective work in this setting. However, enabling multiple immersive applications on a large display presents several challenges. I discuss my solution to these challenges and present an extension of Omegalib that supports fully dynamic, multi-view, multi-user immersion. I evaluate this new system, which I call Multiview Immersion (MVI) in a formal user study: two-user groups are asked to compare 3D sonar scans using MVI, single-view immersion and multiple views without immersion (simulating a standard display wall). My objective is understanding the effect of MVI on analysis effectiveness, view usage and collaboration patterns compared to alternatives. MVI appears to reduce analysis error rates for our sample task and makes it more likely for both users to remain engaged with the analysis task.

PhD Defense Announcement: &ldquo;Multiview Immersion in Hybrid Reality Environments&rdquo;

UIC Computer Science Associate Professor and Electronic Visualization Laboratory faculty member, G. Elisabeta Marai with collaborators from the University of Texas, University of Iowa, and University of Minnesota has been awarded an NIH R01 from the National Cancer Institute. 
&ldquo;SMART-ACT: Spatial Methodologic Approaches for Risk Assessment and Therapeutic Adaptation in Cancer Treatment&rdquo; will develop a computational methodology that supports the construction of a validated precision model of patient-specific outcomes for head and neck cancers, based on demographics, toxicity, and complex imaging data. The methodology will be the first in the field to include both complex imaging and non-imaging data, while taking into account large-scale biological and clinical correlates. A web-based environment will further allow practitioners to interactively explore and communicate the model mechanics and outcomes to stakeholders. The approach is innovative through its leverage of big imaging data repositories and through its unique blend of computational modeling principles from bioengineering, statistics, and computer science (medical imaging and visualization).

CS/EVL Associate Professor Marai awarded NIH R01 from the National Cancer Institute

Project Title: &ldquo;CC* Networking Infrastructure: Building HPRNet (High‐Performance Research Network) for Advancement of Data Intensive Research and Collaboration&rdquo; 
Sponsor: National Science Foundation 
Award amount: $499,745 
PI: Farzad Mashayek (Mechanical and Industrial Engineering) 
Co-PI&rsquo;s: Simon T. Alford (Anatomy & Cell Biology), Maxine Brown (Electronic Visualization Laboratory), Richard Cavanaugh (Physics), Cynthia Herrera Lindstrom (Academic Computing & Communications) 
Main contributor to the proposal: Himanshu Sharma (Advanced Cyberinfrastructure for Education and Research) 
ABSTRACT 
The sizes of scientific datasets are growing exponentially across all scientific disciplines due to several factors such as improved scientific instrumentation, social media and decreasing costs of storage. To extract real value from these geographically distant datasets, researchers need to have access to these datasets at high speeds which is typically not possible with traditional campus networks. In 2009, UIC laid the foundation of a campus research network (CRN) through NSF INCUS award that provided high-performance network access to limited number of researchers. The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) will now be building &ldquo;HPRNet&rdquo;, a high-performance research network providing last mile connectivity for over 31 additional research projects. HPRNet not only improves the ongoing research productivity, but also sets the stage for future innovations and collaborations. 
For HPRNet&rsquo;s deployment, 13 locations are identified at UIC where 10 to 40 Gigabit uplinks to regional, national and international R&E networks will be established. HPRNet will build upon the Science DMZ model, championed by DOE&rsquo;s Energy Sciences Network (ESnet), that works in concert with the current campus research network (CRN) and a special data storage system known as Data Transfer Node (DTN) to deliver high-performance and reliable network paths for data-intensive applications, including high-volume bulk data transfer, remote experiment and/or instrumentation control, cloud computing, data-mining and advanced visualization. This infrastructure will act as a &ldquo;Data Expressway&rdquo; at UIC, providing connectivity to Research & Education networks (R&E) to foster scientific collaboration and discovery. 
Project Title: <a href="https://news.uic.edu/saber-builds-campus-computing-backbone">&ldquo;MRI: Acquisition of SABER: Shared Analytics and Big-data Enterprise Resource&rdquo;</a> 
Sponsor: National Science Foundation 
Award amount: $599,536 
PI: Farzad Mashayek (Mechanical and Industrial Engineering) 
Co-PI&rsquo;s: Philip S. Yu (Computer Science), Fatemeh Khalili-Araghi (Physics), Ao Ma (Bioengineering), Stefan Green (DNA Services Facility), Maxine Brown (Electronic Visualization Laboratory), Suresh K. Aggarwal (Mechanical and Industrial Engineering), Max Berkelhammer (Earth and Environmental Sciences), Michael E. Johnson (Center for Biomolecular Sciences), Bing Liu (Computer Science), Sohail Murad (Illinois Institute of Technology), David P. Nicholls (Department of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science), Hyowon Park (Physics), Thomas J. Royston (Bioengineering), Nebiyou Yonas Tilahun (Urban Planning and Policy) 
ABSTRACT 
Computation has grown ubiquitous across all scientific disciplines and research education in the past few decades. Compared to its vast research portfolio, UIC has always had disproportionately inadequate central computing resources. In 2013, to bridge this widening gap, UIC made a significant investment in UIC’s first &ldquo;condo&rdquo; HPC (High Performance Computing) cluster called EXTREME. Research Computing group, under the leadership of Mr. Himanshu Sharma, has been managing this cluster for about 250 users across 5 colleges and 20 research groups since its inception. Research Computing at UIC is a highly collaborative initiative with representation and initial investments from 5 colleges, the Vice Chancellor for Research and the Provost. 
Despite adding 25% new capacity in its first year, EXTREME is fully committed to individual groups with no scope for further expansion. Due to the high cost of entry, absence of a fees-for-service model and architectural differences barring Big Data researchers, a group of UIC users, with extensive help from Mr. Sharma, decided to pursue federal funding to build SABER: A Shared Analytics and Big Data Enterprise Resource. SABER&rsquo;s architecture will allow all of UIC researchers to utilize the same cluster with minimal application changes for both HPC and MapReduce (Big Data) type workloads. This groundbreaking architecture, originally proposed by Mr. Sharma, will provide a reference architecture for other institutions who are currently creating silo clusters for HPC and Big Data. SABER will be an open-access and fees-for-service cluster providing computational resources to researchers from 9 colleges in a broad range of computational disciplines. SABER will create more opportunities for inter- and multi-disciplinary research to advance important national initiatives such as National Strategic Computing, Precision Medicine and BRAIN.

Events - 2017

Doctoral Defense Announcement: “Supporting Navigation with a Torso Wearable Tactile Display”

VGA Exhibition Tells Underrecognized Story Of New Media In Chicago

Mechdyne Open House at UIC/EVL Showcases expanded riverwalk concepts for Chicago

SAGE2 9th Annual International SC BOF @ SC17

New, Advanced SAGE2 Features Being Demonstrated at SC17

SC17 SAGE2 BOF materials now posted online

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