Ph.D. Student Name: Arthur Nishimoto 
Committee: 
Prof. Andrew Johnson, Chair and Advisor 
Prof. Debaleena Chattopadhyay 
Prof. Steve Jones 
Prof. Wei Tang 
Prof. Jason Leigh (University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa) 
Date: 12/2/2019 
Time: 11 am - 1 pm 
Location: ERF 2068 
Abstract: 
Given the adoption of many variations of virtual and augmented reality devices such as CAVE/CAVE2, large virtual reality (VR) capable displays walls/domes, and a growing set of increasingly capable and affordable head-mounted displays (HMD) in both commercial and industrial applications, it has become apparent that not one platform will be appropriate for every use case scenario. HMDs are becoming increasingly more lightweight and powerful, but in collaborative settings there always will be a need for a shared display or environment to bring discussions together. 
The goal of this proposal is to leverage the best of current augmented reality head mounted display technologies: 360 degree field of regard visuals, rendering of graphics over the real world, and personalized views with the best of large display wall environments: high resolution and contrast, shared visual environment, and more accurate tracking. 
With fully immersive HMDs blocking our natural sense of communication and AR still limited by resolution and field of view, combining large VR display walls and AR may provide a middle ground to maximize the growing benefits of interacting together in virtual worlds.

Preliminary Examination Announcement: &ldquo;Collaborative Augmented Reality for Virtual Reality Display Wall Environments&rdquo;

Dana Plepys is one of six people receiving the 2019 UIC Chancellor&rsquo;s Academic Professional Excellence Award (CAPE Award). This Award recognizes the demonstrated excellence of academic professional staff members and affirms UIC&rsquo;s highest regard for their contributions to the campus. She will receive the award during the UIC Employee Recognition Award Ceremony and Reception, which takes place on Tuesday, November 19, 2019, at the UIC Isadore and Sadie Dorin Forum, 725 West Roosevelt Road, starting at 10:30am. 
Plepys, Associate Director of the UIC Computer Science department&rsquo;s Electronic Visualization Laboratory and Associate Director of the UIC Software Technologies Research Center (STRC), has distinguished herself as an exemplary UIC academic professional who has made outstanding contributions, both administrative and technical, to EVL and STRC&rsquo;s successes. Administratively, she manages all of EVL&rsquo;s and STRC&rsquo;s business and financial operations. Technically, she serves as a project manager and she promotes and documents EVL/STRC accomplishments via websites, video production and historical preservation. She also contributes her skills to major international professional organizations; notably she is Editor/Administrator of the ACM SIGGRAPH Video Review and is Director of the CineGrid Exchange, a distributed digital media archive. In addition, Plepys is one of the featured contributors in the recent book "&ldquo;New Media Futures: The Rise of Women in the Digital Arts.&rdquo; 
The CAPE Award, long overdue, recognizes her leadership service to her workplace and UIC. 
Congratulations, Dana! 
<a href="https://tinyurl.com/ydvfb5gq">More information on the UIC Employee Recognition Award Ceremony and Reception.</a>

Dana Plepys receiving UIC CAPE Award at 2019 UIC Employee Recognition Award Ceremony and Reception

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

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

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

SC19 SAGE2 BOF Presentation Slides

SAGE2 Team Members at SC19

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

The Video Game Art Gallery hosts Electronic Visualization Laboratory and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago student virtual reality projects for their first collaborative, curated show. The works represent creative virtual reality immersive experiences created as part of 2019 class projects by EVL faculty member and School of Design Professor Daria Tsoupikova's and affiliated faculty from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago Brenda Lopez-Silva's students. 
For one day only Friday October 25, 2019 visit the exhibition at: 
Video Game Art Gallery 
2418 W Bloomingdale Ave, #101 
Chicago, IL 60647 
Opening reception: 5-8 PM

Virtual Reality Student Exposition at VGA

EVL PhD candidate Ashwini Naik presents the results of collaborative research between the Computer Science and Molecular & Cellular Biology departments at the University of Illinois at Chicago and colleagues at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign - &lsquo;V-NeuroStack&rsquo;. V-NeuroStack is a web-based application that uses 3-D time stacks to identify patterns in the neuronal activity and to understand functional relationships between neurons. This approach can help identify patterns in the neuronal activity which may not be visible using a 2-dimensional view of the slice. 
The Neuroscience 2019 - the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) 49th annual meeting was held October 19-23 at McCormick Place in Chicago. SfN is the premier venue for neuroscientists and researchers to present emerging science and explore new tools/technologies advancing the field.

EVL PhD Candidate Ashwini Naik Presents &lsquo;V-NeuroStack&rsquo; at Neuroscience 2019

PhD Student: Abhinav Kumar 
Date: September 27, 2019 
Time: 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM 
Location: Room 2068, Engineering Research Facility 
Committee: 
Barbara Di Eugenio (Chair and Advisor) 
Andrew Johnson 
Natalie Parde 
Cornelia Caragea 
Kallirroi Georgila 
Abstract: 
When exploring data visualizations, users that are novices to visualization, oftentimes struggle with translating their particular queries into an effective visual representation, which this research aims to address by automatically constructing and managing visualizations appropriately. I am particularly focusing on the language processing, which is challenging because spoken dialogue is oftentimes under-specified, leading to open interpretation and in our case potentially the wrong visualization. My main contributions are as follows. First, I am developing language processing in the multimodal setting. I worked with others in collecting and annotating a corpus of dialogue data, comprising of speech text and hand gestures, that came from data collected via human experiments. Second, I used a local context for building a module for interpreting the underlying intent of what the user says. Third, given the small size of our dataset, I augmented it using paraphrasing and showed that the intent interpretation module improved on the augmented data. As part of my proposed work, I will work on text segmentation to identify the boundaries of the local context that my current intent interpretation module operates on. I also plan to develop a model that captures references made through language and hand pointing gestures and determines the appropriate target visualizations for them.

Preliminary Examination Announcement: &ldquo;Towards a Natural Language Interface for Exploring Data Visualization&rdquo;

Therapeutic games play an increasingly important role in modern healthcare. Games have been used to treat a broad spectrum of individuals, including patients with dementia, stroke, ADHD, cancer, autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to name a few. We will survey autism research and evidence-based case studies. This workshop introduces participants to the fundamentals of therapeutic game development with a focus on autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and mental health applications. 
Participants are introduced to scripting and develop a simple mental health game using the popular Unity game engine. They work in teams and are involved in problem-solving discussions to design a game to benefit people with autism. Participants share reflections and discuss how contemporary technologies can inspire novel forms of healthcare. 
An introduction to the basics of coding and scripting, designed for participants with no prior programming experience but an enthusiasm to learn about therapeutic games. 
Date: September 20 (9am-4pm) and September 21 (9am-1pm), 2019 
Location: Discovery Partners Institute, 200 S. Wacker Dr., Chicago 
Lectures and tutorials: 
Maureen Dunne (University of Illinois at Chicago, Department of Disability and Human Development) 
Daria Tsoupikova (University of Illinois at Chicago, School of Design, Electronic Visualization Laboratory) 
Sponsor:: Discovery Partners Institute (DPI)

Introduction to Therapeutic Games with Unity 3D

Ph.D. Student: Jillian Aurisano 
Date: Tuesday, September 17, 2019 
Time: 11:00 am 
Location: Room 3036, Engineering Research Facility 
Committee: 
Andrew Johnson (Chair) 
Debaleena Chattopadhyay 
Barbara Di Eugenio 
G. Elisabeta Marai 
Rick Stevens (Argonne National Laboratory, University of Chicago) 
Abstract: 
Analysis of large, complex datasets stands to benefit from environments that permit users to view and juxtapose many views of data. Large, high-resolution environments are capable of showing many related views of data, but interaction with these views poses significant challenges in visual and interaction design. In this talk, I will present work toward &ldquo;multi-view interactions&rdqo; that enable users to create, organize and act on many views at once, through multi-modal speech+gesture queries in large flexible canvas environments. The goal is the enable users to rapidly and efficiently generate sets of views in support of multi-view analysis tasks, organize these views to reflect changing analysis goals, and operate on sets of views collectively, rather than individually, to efficiently reach large portions of the &lsquo;data+attribute space&rsquo;. I will implement and evaluate this approach within two domains and two user communities: City of Chicago data for informed citizens and deep learning predictions data for precision medicine in cancer.

Preliminary Examination Announcement: &ldquo;Multi-view, multi-modal speech+gesture interaction in large display environments&rdquo;

PhD Candidate: Anthony Perritano 
Date: Friday, September 6th, 2019 
Time: 10:30 am CT 
Location: Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), Room 2068 ERF (Continuum) 
Committee: 
Tom Moher (Chair) 
Andrew Johnson 
Chris Kanich 
Joel Brown, Biology 
James Slotta, University of Toronto 
Yvonne Rogers, University College London 
Abstract: 
An important research question concerns the nature of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) methods and supports for improving students&rsquo; access to, application of, and general interactions with the community knowledge in a learning community approach. This thesis investigates a novel approach to supporting classroom learning communities through the use of embodied interaction and ambient visualizations. Specifically, community knowledge is embedded within the physical space of the classroom, with the aim of mediating opportunistic inter-group interactions, instigated through proximity and shared artifacts. This approach entails decomposing the community knowledge-base into a collection of independent thematic sub-stores, and then conceptually distributing those sub-stores to mapped, demarcated locations around the classroom, called &ldquo;Knowledge Places.&rdquo; This necessitates physical movement among and proximity to those places in order for students to contribute to or otherwise access their peers&rsquo; contributions to the emerging knowledge-base. This investigation was embedded within a larger NSF-funded study and was enacted over the course of a semester within a sixth-grade classroom as part of the regular life science curriculum (e.g., food webs, ecosystems).

Students Working at Knowledge Place

PhD Thesis Defense Announcement: &ldquo;Knowledge Places: Embedding Knowledge in the Space of the Classroom&rdquo;

Since 2017, Leonardo commenced a quarterly recognition of exceptional peer reviewers noted for their in-depth and deeply constructive feedback on papers under consideration for publication. Among those recognized in the August 2019 edition of <a href="https://www.leonardo.info/blog/2019/07/22/recognition-of-leonardos-outstanding-peer-reviewers?utm_source=LNN+subscribers&utm_campaign=054f45e4b7-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_07_31_05_49&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_59c5038641-054f45e4b7-116710661&mc_cid=054f45e4b7&mc_eid=c32370193e">Leonardo 52:4</a> is Daria Tsoupikova, associate professor in the UIC School of Design and an affiliated faculty member of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory. 
Tsoupikova's research and artwork focus on the development of virtual reality (VR) art projects and networked multi-user exhibitions for VR projection systems, such as the Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE and CAVE2). Her work lies at the crossroads of artistic and technological innovation and investigates computational creativity to design real-life applications that advance healthcare, education and social change.

Daria Tsoupikova Recognized Among Leonardo's Outstanding Peer Reviewers

School of Design associate professor, and EVL affiliated faculty member Daria Tsoupikova showcases her work as part of the Chicago Design Milestones 1920-2019 installation at the <a href="https://150mediastream.com/">150 Media Stream</a>. The upcoming installation taking place throughout July visualizes the evolution of Chicago design by its examination and presentation of historic characteristics of design works in the <a href="https://chicagodesignarchive.org/">Chicago Design Archive</a> collection over the last 10 decades. 
Chicago Design Milestones​ was developed as a collaboration of CDA, University of Illinois at Chicago School of Design & Electronic Visualization Laboratory, and Columbia College Chicago. ​It is part of the ongoing research of this collaboration ​aiming to highlight the role of Chicago as a national design center​ through the use of new technologies. 
Opening of the ​Chicago Design Milestones 1920–2019​ installation: 
Monday, July 1, 6:30–9pm, 150 N Riverside Plaza, Chicago 
Creators: Daria Tsoupikova (UIC), Sharon Oiga (UIC/CDA), Guy Villa Jr (CCC), Jack Weiss (CDA), Cheri Gearhart (CDA), Wayne Stuetzer (CDA), Krystofer Kim (NASA), Ali Khan (UIC) 
Grant funding support: Riverside/150 Media Stream, Columbia College Chicago, UIC College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts 
150 Media Stream comprises 89 LED blades stretching 150 feet long and rising 22 feet high. Located at 150 North Riverside Plaza in Chicago, 150 Media Stream is the only structure of its kind dedicated to showcasing Chicago artists, culture and history alongside renowned and emerging artists from around the world.

Chicago Design Milestones 1920–2019 Installation Opens July 1, 2019

PhD Candidate: Timothy Luciani 
Date: Wednesday, May 15th, 2019 
Time: 10 am CT 
Location: ERF 2068 (Continuum) 
Committee: 
Dr. G. Elisabeta Marai (Chair) 
Dr. Andrew Johnson 
Dr. Robert Kenyon 
Dr. Angus Forbes, University of California, Santa Cruz 
Dr. Klaus Mueller, Stony Brook University 
Abstract: 
The scientific community faces an increasing amount of data due to advances in acquisition technologies. Because of the ubiquity of large data repositories in today&rsquo;s society, scientists have begun to analyze and explore the abundance of data now at their fingertips to both generate and test new hypotheses. However, spatial features often are an essential trait of these large-scale scientific datasets. While established visualization guidelines can provide recommendations that are generalizable enough to be applied to a variety of problems, they are often designed for abstract data (no spatial attributes) of moderate scale. Selecting an effective approach in these situations can be challenging for both novice and veteran researchers, especially when it may not be apparent wherein the data to begin the analysis or how to go about doing so. Visualization design strategies can help lessen this burden by guiding questions such as what data to show, how to display it, and if necessary, in what order to arrange it. 
This dissertation examines design strategies for visualization collaborations involving spatial data; in particular, how the data and task abstractions, workflow processes, and user expertise affect the decisions behind the design strategies of visualization collaborations involving spatial data. These strategies are actualized through the design and implementation of four integrated systems that demonstrate their effectiveness across the four spatial data problems in science and engineering domains. The merits and limitations of this work are supported through an analysis of each domain problem by demonstrating the complexities involved with interdisciplinary research and the necessity of working directly with domain scientists and their data. These strategies can serve as a reference for researchers who are working on endeavors that similarly characterize to those described in this dissertation.

PhD Thesis Defense Announcement: &ldquo;Problem-Driven Design Strategies for Scientific Data Visualization&rdquo;

EDITOR&rsquo;S NOTE: The following article about UIC CS/EVL PhD graduate Victor Mateevitsi appears on the <a href="http://tinyurl.com/yy5zl6p5">UIC Computer Science NEWS website.</a> 
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 
by Andrea Poet 
March 14, 2019 
A jet suit that can travel more than 30 miles per hour and ascend to 12,000 feet. Self-lacing sneakers. And a jacket that allows its wearer to navigate by using vibrations to alert them to obstacles in close proximity. 
These objects are just a few of the more than 100 wearable technology pieces that will be included at the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago (MSI) Wired to Wear exhibition, the first ever dedicated to wearable technology. 
The inclusion of UIC alumnus Victor Mateevitsi&rsquo;s SpiderSense tactile jacket in the exhibition thrills its designer. 
&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never had my technology in a museum,&rdquo; Mateevitsi said. &ldquo;As scientists, we do bleeding-edge work but we typically are presenting to peers, in journals. We rarely get the chance to share work directly with the public, and see them interact with it.&rdquo; 
Mateevitsi earned his PhD in Computer Science, with a specialization in human augmentics from UIC&rsquo;s Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL). Human augmentics can enable humans to see and hear better, absorb and interpret more information and increase physical endurance. Not all of human augmentics is what we would consider the stuff of science fiction: it can include eyeglasses, or hearing aids. More recent technologies include robotic limbs, Bluetooth earpieces and biometric sensors. 
The EVL at UIC, where the human augmentics research is being pioneered, is an internationally renowned interdisciplinary research laboratory that enables scientific and engineering discoveries by designing and developing high-performance visualization, virtual reality, and collaboration systems using advanced networking infrastructure. 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 United States. 
The original SpiderSense prototype had 13 sensors, located on the shoulders, wrists, chest, upper back, lower back, and abs. SpiderSense technology works by vibrating to let the user know if they are approaching an object, or if an object is approaching them. It can be used by the visually impaired or people in the line of duty, such as soldiers or firefighters, who are in areas of low visibility. 
Mateevitsi worked on other tools during his time at UIC&rsquo;s EVL, including developing 3D Visualization Software for the U.S. Air Force medical researchers; inventing the HealthBar, an ambient persuasive technology reflecting the health status of an office worker; and developing a client-server application enabling medical researches to upload image datasets to a remote database. 
He currently works as a human-computer interaction research scientist and sensory engineer at GN Advanced Science, a company that makes medical, professional and consumer audio products, including hearing aids. 
There are still some hurdles before the SpiderSense can be commercialized. The first prototype, which Mateevitsi co-invented with fellow UIC students Brad Haggadone and Brian Kunzer while at UIC, was a bit clunky, with 13 modules strapped to the wearer&rsquo;s body. The second iteration, developed by Mateevitsi, is more streamlined and easier to wear, but the electronics are housed in plastic cases, and the SpiderSense jacket cannot be washed without damaging the wires. 
&ldquo;I&rsquo;m waiting for technology to catch up,&rdquo; Mateevitsi said. 
While we wait, visitors to the Wired to Wear exhibit will have the opportunity to test out SpiderSense. Using Mateevitsi&rsquo;s concept, technological futurist firm Quantum XPR built out a vest for the exhibition, and guests will navigate a space relying on the haptic feedback the vest provides to alert them to obstacles in close proximity. Mateevitsi&rsquo;s first two prototypes will also be on display. 
&ldquo;Wearable technology sits at the intersection of design, technology and innovation, and we are proud to bring together compelling examples of how it is changing the world,&rdquo; said David Mosena, MSI&rsquo;s president and chief executive officer. &ldquo;We designed Wired to Wear to showcase the possibilities that wearable technology presents for society now and help guests understand how it can create opportunities for them they could have never imagined.&rdquo; 
The Wired to Wear exhibition opens on March 21. Wired to Wear is sponsored by BMO Harris Bank and will be at MSI through May 2020. It is not included in Museum Entry and requires an additional timed-entry ticket, $12 for adults and seniors, and $9 for children. <a href="http://msichicago.org">More information on the exhibition</a> or call 773-684-1414.

Victor Mateevitsi wearing his latest SpiderSense prototype jacket.

UIC alumnus Victor Mateevitsi&rsquo;s SpiderSense jacket included in MSI&rsquo;s Wired to Wear&trade; exhibition

JANUARY 24, 2019 - Daria Tsoupikova, associate professor in the UIC School of Design and an affiliated faculty member of the UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) which is part of the Computer Science (CS) department, recently received a $150,000 grant from the University of Illinois (UI) System&rsquo;s Presidential Initiative to Celebrate the Impact of the Arts and the Humanities. Given how important the arts and humanities are to education, research, scholarship, and public engagement, this newly-created initiative supports the visibility and excellence of the arts and humanities at the UI System&rsquo;s sister campuses. 
Tsoupikova&rsquo;s &ldquo;Transforming Storytelling: Multi-User Virtual Reality Theater for Collaborative Tele-Immersive Exploration&rdquo; is a collaboration with EVL Director of Research and CS associate professor Andrew Johnson, CS/EVL Senior Research Programmer Lance Long, CS/EVL PhD student Arthur Nishimoto, and Chicago-based theater director Jo Cattell, who recently received the Goodman Theatre&rsquo;s 2018 Michael Maggio Directing Fellowship. They will partner with the Goodman Theatre&rsquo;s Alice Rapoport Center for Education and Engagement, whose youth program works with Chicago&rsquo;s diverse demographics of middle-grade and teenage kids (ages 11-18). 
&ldquo;Transforming Storytelling&rdquo; will demonstrate how virtual-reality technology can be both an artistic medium to further immerse participants in live theater experiences and a storytelling medium. Project collaborators will develop multi-user theatrical performances that merge real and virtual worlds with the goal of encouraging stronger theater engagement with tech-savvy younger audiences. Chicago youth will attend performances at the Goodman Theatre and at UIC/EVL&rsquo;s CAVE2&trade;, allowing for immersive participation in the plot lines through avatars, hand-held devices and 3D platforms. 
While non-profit theater groups have great interest in incorporating new technologies in live performances, they don&rsquo;t necessarily have the financial support to do so. UIC&rsquo;s collaboration with the Goodman Theatre can demonstrate that live performance combined with virtual reality is a viable option for immersive theater. 
The UI System&rsquo;s Presidential Initiative selected 14 faculty projects from 53 proposals, which will share nearly $2-Million in funding over the next two years. Of the 14 proposals, all but one was allocated $100,000 or more and eight will receive $150,000 or more. By comparison, the average grant award in 2016 by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) was $25,000 and fewer than 40 NEA grants totaled more than $100,000, according to Grantmakers in the Arts. 
<a href="https://news.uillinois.edu/view/7815/738301">University of Illinois System News, January 24, 2019</a> 
<a href="https://cs.uic.edu/news-stories/uics-electronic-visiualization-lab-is-helping-reimagine-live-stage-performance/">UIC Computer Science Department News, April 25, 2019 
Chicago Tribune, January 25, 2019 
<a href="https://www.pressreader.com/usa/chicago-tribune/20190125/281638191417696">&ldquo;U. of I. grants $2M to bolster arts, humanities&rdquo;</a>

Young adults explore &ldquo;GenWorld,&rdquo; a virtual world previously developed by UIC CS/Design students Peter Hanula, Kyle Dalton, Morgan Osborn, and Christel Tiu as part of the Spring 2017 CS/Design Creative Coding class co-taught by Daria Tsoupikova

Events - 2019

Preliminary Examination Announcement: “Collaborative Augmented Reality for Virtual Reality Display Wall Environments”

Dana Plepys receiving UIC CAPE Award at 2019 UIC Employee Recognition Award Ceremony and Reception

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

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

Virtual Reality Student Exposition at VGA

EVL PhD Candidate Ashwini Naik Presents ‘V-NeuroStack’ at Neuroscience 2019

Contact