EVL faculty, assistant professor of Computer Science Fabio Miranda is joined by colleagues Jon Froehlich (University of Washington), Maryam Hosseini (Rutgers University) in organizing a 90-minute workshop on urban accessibility at the <a href="http://wp1066709.server-he.de/sdss2021/">2021 Spatial Data Science Symposium</a>. 
The interactive session entitled &ldquo;The Future of Global-Scale Spatial Data Collection and Analyses on Urban (in)Accessibility for People with Disabilities&rdquo; will bring together geographers, computer scientists, public health researchers, disability scholars, and beyond to talk about opportunities and challenges related to data collection, analysis, and tools for urban (in)accessibility. This virtual event is scheduled for Monday, December 13 12:15pm CT. 
<a href="https://www.airmeet.com/e/52c9e110-4848-11ec-a698-619a9d382b96">Register for SDSS</a>. 
Read more about this <a href="http://sdss2021.spatial-data-science.net/session_pdf/1-The%20Future%20of%20Urban%20Accessibility_%20Data%20Collection,%20Analytics,%20and%20Visualization.pdf">specific conference session</a>.

The Future of Global-Scale Spatial Data Collection and Analyses on Urban (in)Accessibility for People with Disabilities

2021 Spatial Data Science Symposium

The SAGE team has been hard at work designing and developing SAGE3, the NSF-funded Smart Amplified Group Environment, which is a total rewrite of SAGE2. 
SAGE3 ALPHA RELEASE AND WEBSITE 
<a href="https://sage3.sagecommons.org/">SAGE3 alpha version for Linux, Windows and MacOS</a> is now available for download. For those who wish to test SAGE3 and provide our team with constructive feedback, go to the new SAGE3 website: (1) download the software and display client and (2) watch the &ldquo;How To&rdquo; video. Note: Users who tested earlier SAGE3 versions should delete old versions and use the latest one on the website. 
SAGE2 
For users who rely on SAGE2 for production (collaborative research, teaching, meetings), continue to use. We will answer support questions for the foreseeable future, but will not introduce new releases. The final release and documentation can be found on the <a href="https://sage2.sagecommons.org/">SAGE2 website</a>. 
SAGE3 / SAGE2 COMMUNITY USER FORUMS 
New SAGE3/SAGE2 Community user forums are now hosted on Slack; to join: 
<a href="https://tinyurl.com/sagecommunity">tinyurl.com/sagecommunity</a>. 
<ul>
<li>For SAGE2, subscribe to the sage2-support channel.</li>
<li>For SAGE3, subscribe to the sage3-support channel.</li>
</ul>

Screen shot of SAGE3 session.

SAGE3 Alpha Version Available - Users: Please Help Test and Provide Feedback

The Goodman Theater New Stages Festival will showcase &ldquo;HUMMINGBIRD&rdquo; December 3-6, 2021to be held at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at UIC. 
&ldquo;HUMMINGBIRD&rdquo; is a multi-user theatrical performance merging live theater and virtual reality into an immersive experience that smashes together storytelling, gaming and virtual reality. Audiences go beyond observing the performance on a physical stage by meeting on a virtual stage inside the play itself, interacting with each other, the story, and the performers. 
The performance features a gutsy teen outsmarting her mother&rsquo;s narcissistic boss, surviving dangerous new technology in Hummingbird: a live, immersive adventure that transforms theatrical storytelling utilizing cutting-edge, virtual reality technology. 
Created by Daria Tsoupikova, Jo Catell, Sai Priya Jyothula, Andrew Johnson, Arthur Nishimoto and Lance Long with the support from the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), the University of Illinois Presidential Initiative to Celebrate the Impact of the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts Grant for Art Project. 
Read Jerald Pierce's December 2nd <a href="Jerald Pierce ">article covering the Goodman Theater New Stages Fesitval</a> in the Chicago Tribune.

Goodman Theater New Stages Announces Staging of &ldquo;HUMMINGBIRD&rdquo;

Former EVL student and graduate research assistant Elisa Tardini is recognized as a recipient of the Outstanding Thesis/Dissertation Award from the Graduate College at the University of Illinois at Chicago for her thesis entitled &ldquo;Recursive deep meta-reinforcement learning for personalized sequential dynamic treatment policies.&rdquo; This research focuses on a recursive deep meta-reinforcement learning approach to develop a model to prescribe an optimal treatment for patients.

2021 Outstanding Thesis/Dissertation Award to Elisa Tardini

EVL alumna (MFA 2000) and associate professor of Media Study at the University of Buffalo, Josephine Anstey continues her creative endeavors with the launch of her animated short, &ldquo;Pik and Etty in Progressive Taxation&rdquo; at the <a href="https://www.twitch.tv/yeswecannibal">Yes We Cannibal Salon</a> on November 21, 2021 at 5pm EST/4pm CST. 
Pik and Etty are economic commentators and re-enactors. With a rich cast of other clay figures they feature in short animations inspired by radical economist Thomas Piketty. Between 1900-1980 the &ldquo;ninety percent&rdquo; got richer and the &ldquo;ten percent&rdquo; got poorer. This <a href="https://yeswecannibal.org/encounters/meat-meet-35-josephine-anstey/">second Pik and Etty video</a> discusses the role of taxation in spreading the wealth. 
<a href="https://yeswecannibal.org/">Yes We Cannibal</a> is an anti-profit institution for experimental art and social practice. 
<a href="http://www.josephineanstey.com">Josephine Anstey&rsquo;s</a> career has been concept and project-driven, engaging with a wide variety of media practices and technologies. Experiments with narrative & dramatic forms and questions of identity & consciousness have been constant themes. Currently, she is making animations with clay figures Pik and Etty about economics and writing a scifi/ecofiction novel. Other projects include interactive drama, virtual and mixed reality, intermedia performance, video-art, radio documentary, web and prose fiction. Her VR and video works have shown widely in the US, in Europe, South America and Asia, and she has work in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Ars Electronica Center, Austria.

EVL Alumna Josephine Anstey Introduces Her Animated Short &ldquo;Pik and Etty in Progressive Taxation&rdquo;

EVL faculty member and Computer Science associate professor Liz Marai has been recognized as a 2020/2021 College of Engineering Teaching Award Recipient. The recipients of the teaching award are traditionally recognized for their excellence in teaching and their contributions to the curriculum. In addition, some of the awardees have rapidly adopted new technologies, modalities, and innovative thinking to achieve learning objectives as UIC transitioned to remote learning during the 2020 pandemic. 
Marai is among the following award recipients: 
BME: Dave Eddington, Dieter Klatt, Zhinan Wang 
CHE: Gang Cheng, Alan Zdunek 
CME: Ahmed Abokifa, Didem Ozevin, Bo Zou 
CS: Gonzalo Bello, Joe Hummel, Chris Kanich, Liz Marai, Natalie Parde, Shanon Reckinger 
ECE: Vahe Caliskan, Alan Feinerman, James Kosmach, Wenjing Rao, Renata Revelo 
MIE: Jonathan Komperda, Scott Reckinger, William Ryan, Yeow Siow, Jamison Szwalek 
Congratulations on this well-deserved honor!

Associate Professor Liz Marai Recognized as 2020/2021 COE Teaching Award Recipient

Thanks to new NSF support, beginning May 2020, the SAGE team has been hard at work designing and developing SAGE3, the Smart Amplified Group Environment. This new funding enables us to take SAGE2, introduced in 2013, to a new level, integrating Artificial Intelligence technologies with applications, visualization workflows and collaboration services. The team demonstrated an early version of SAGE3 at two webinars this summer, hosted by the CineGrid and PRAGMA organizations (information below). 
In the past, we have looked forward to seeing old users and meeting new users at the annual Supercomputing (SC) conference, though team members will not be attending this year. However, we continue to be hard at work on SAGE3 and are planning a number of exciting announcements for early December. 
1. A new SAGE3 website. 
2. An &ldquo;alpha release&rdquo; of SAGE3, which is an early, first release of the software, for user testing and feedback. 
3. A &ldquo;how-to&rdquo; video explaining current SAGE3 features. 
4. A new user forum hosted on Slack (tinyurl.com/sagecommunity). 
Given SAGE3 is in an early prototype phase, we expect our users to continue using SAGE2 for work, meetings, classes, etc. We will continue to answer support questions for SAGE2 for the foreseeable future, but will not introduce new releases. 
Stay tuned for SAGE3 news updates as they become available !! 
Maxine Brown 
SAGE team member 
<a href="mailto:maxine@uic.edu">maxine@uic.edu</a> 
<a href="https://youtu.be/PyE09TxwhPE">SAGE3 presentation at CineGrid, June 2021</a> 
<a href="https://youtu.be/UprsquVI6yo">SAGE3 presentation at PRAGMA, August 2021</a> 
SAGE3 is being developed by the Laboratory for Advanced Visualization and Applications (LAVA) and the Hawaii Data Science Institute (HI-DSI) at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UHM), the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), and the InfoVis Lab at Virginia Tech (VT). SAGE3 receives major funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), awards #2004014 (UHM), #2003800 (UIC) and #2003387 (VT). 
SAGE2 received major NSF support, award #ACI-1441963, to UHM and UIC. 
SAGE, SAGE2 and SAGE3 are trademarks of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees.

Exciting SAGE3 announcements planned for early December

EVL faculty member and professor of Design Daria Tsoupikova will represent UIC at the 6th Annual International CAAV Conference to be held as a hybrid event at Purdue University on November 1 - 4, 2021. Tspoupikova will participate in a panel discussion on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, (DEI) and Accessibility, scheduled Wednesday, November 3rd at 1:30 pm EST. 
Tsoupikova is currently involved in several DEI activities, in particular a long-term project with Chicago&rsquo;s Goodman Theater on a virtual-reality-based theater experience to inform some of Chicago&rsquo;s youth who live in disadvantaged neighborhoods on the value of theater by making it experiential and relevant. She will discuss her projects and experiences in affecting DEI.

Daria Tsoupikova Participates in CAAV 2021

EVL in collaboration with Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) hosted a satellite event for VIS2021 featuring a presentation from invited speaker Dr. Alan Keahey, VP for Data Science Visualization at Conversant Media, student lightning talks, a conference virtual watch party, followed by a reception near UIC on Tuesday, October 26, 2021. 
Due to COVID, the IEEE VIS conference was held virtually, complemented by local satellite in-person events to promote face-to-face networking between academic and professional VIS communities. 
Watch a <a href="https://youtu.be/mYEysIVb9Vc">video synopsis on EVLTube</a>. 
<a href="https://www.evl.uic.edu/vis-chicago/">More information on the IEEE VIS2021 Chicago Satellite Event.</a> 
This event is being organized by Fabio Miranda (EVL) and Victor Mateevisti (ANL).

EVL Hosts Satellite Event for IEEE VIS2021

For the last several years EVL faculty member and CS associate professor Liz Marai has been collaborating with the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and the University of Iowa to develop tools to help oncologists make better assessments for treating cancer patients. More recently, Liz Marai and co-investigator Xinhua Zhang also from UIC have been developing a scalable artificial intelligence system based on real patient data to serve as a decision support tool for physicians treating head and neck cancer patients. This research is funded by the National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute Award #3R01CA258827-01S1, entitled &ldquo;Longitudinal Spatial-Nonspatial Decision Support for Competing Outcomes in Head and Neck Cancer Therapy&rdquo; with principal investigators from UIC, the University of Texas, and the University of Iowa. 
See the full article in the <a href="https://engineering.uic.edu/about/coe-news/rise/fall-2021/better-ai-for-better-decisions/">College of Engineering&rsquo;s CEO News.</a>

EVL Artificial Intelligence Research Featured in COE News

SEPTEMBER 22, 2021 - The UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory&rsquo;s (EVL) long-time collaborator, the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), received a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant, to start October 2021, to Enhance and Sustain their CHASE-CI project. As part of EVL&rsquo;s ongoing commitment to this research effort, EVL will host GPU resources and data servers to enhance and extend UCSD&rsquo;s Pacific Research Platform (PRP) Nautilus Hypercluster through 2021-2024. 
In 2017, UCSD received an NSF award for CHASE-CI, the Cognitive Hardware And Software Ecosystem - Community Infrastructure, which initially provided a community of Computer & Information Science and Engineering researchers doing Machine Learning and Computational Media applications with a distributed cluster containing 256 Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). This cluster - named Nautilus - was originally distributed across 10 California campuses and built on PRP. The NSF-funded PRP project focused on integrating California&rsquo;s high-speed regional research & education network (for fast data transfers among campuses) with DTNs, or Data Transfer Nodes, which are specialized storage systems located at each campus edge, optimized to quickly send and receive large data flows. 
Early on, EVL was among 50 UCSD partners to connect to PRP, thanks to UIC&rsquo;s high-bandwidth connectivity (100 Gigabits per second) to national research and education networks via the StarLight International/National Communications Exchange Facility in downtown Chicago. At that time, UCSD provided EVL with the campus&rsquo;s first DTN, which has since been integrated into the Nautilus cluster, providing 192 Terabytes (TB) of data storage for Big Data applications. More recently, as part of its ongoing PRP award, UCSD is providing EVL with an additional 216 TB of data storage. 
Over the past 5 years, Nautilus has grown. PRP interoperability with national and international research and education networks creates a high-capacity data-centric &ldquo;freeway system&rdquo; now stretching across the nation and across oceans that moves Nautilus data among DTNs located at other research institutions. UCSD&rsquo;s Nautilus cluster contains hundreds of GPUs and many Terabytes of storage. While 25% of the computational hardware and data resources are provided by the UCSD CHASE-CI award, 75% is provided by other researchers and institutions who voluntarily contribute resources, building a shared platform that they jointly own and control. EVL has contributed some of its own GPU nodes to Nautilus, with plans to federate more of its GPU resources over time. However, any Computer & Information Science and Engineering researcher can get an account on Nautilus, whether or not they contribute resources. 
This new CHASE-CI Enhance and Sustain award aims to enhance and sustain Nautilus&rsquo;s user community. EVL, as a UCSD partner institution, will receive an 8 GPU Nautilus Machine Learning node, to be integrated with Nautilus, to provide the community with additional GPUs and data services. While EVL currently has substantial computing facilities to support the needs of UIC College of Engineering faculty who require GPUs and data storage, being part of the CHASE-CI Enhance and Sustain grant and integrating the Lab&rsquo;s resources with Nautilus expands faculty and student access to national (and international) scale community computational and data resources. 
NSF award #2120019 to UCSD, ENS: CHASE-CI, 2021-2024 
NSF award #1730158 to UCSD, CHASE-CI, 2017-2020 
NSF award #1541349 to UCSD, PRP, 2015-2022

EVL Continues UCSD Collaboration to Enhance and Sustain CHASE-CI

Construction activities for the new $117.8 million, 135,000-square-foot Computer Design Research and Learning Center to be located at 900 W. Taylor St. is underway. The CDRLC will support the Department of Computer Science&rsquo;s growing student enrollment with 16,000 square feet of classroom space for collaborative teaching and learning environments, as well as 35 labs for faculty research activities in the computer science and engineering disciplines. 
The CDRLC will be the new home for the Electronic Visualization Laboratory featuring the latest technological and computing innovations to support research in advanced visualization, networking and collaborative environments. 
Read more about the CDRLC groundbreaking in the <a href="https://today.uic.edu/uic-breaks-ground-on-new-computer-design-research-and-learning-center">July 15th issue of UIC Today.</a> 
See a live webcam of the building&rsquo;s progress via the <a href="https://webcampub.multivista.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=aPublicWebcam.embed&WebcamPublicEmbedUID=5D4DCF05-AB2B-4770-A090-D79BE467F958">Multivista Construction Documentation webcam.</a>

New Computer Design Research and Learning Center Breaks Ground

For those unable to attend the SAGE3 presentations and live demonstrations by SAGE3 Principal Investigator (PI) Jason Leigh and co-PI Luc Renambot as well as other SAGE3 Team members to PRAGMA and CineGrid earlier this summer, the sessions are now available via YouTube. 
<a href="https://youtu.be/UprsquVI6yo">Access the PRAGMA recording.</a> 
The same SAGE3 virtual presentation and demonstration was done for the CineGrid community; however, the Questions & Answers following the demo were very different. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyE09TxwhPE">Access the CineGrid recording.</a> 
SAGE3 is being developed by the Laboratory for Advanced Visualization and Applications (LAVA) and the Hawaii Data Science Institute (HI-DSI) at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UHM), the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), and the Sanghani Center for AI and Data Analytics (Sanghani) at Virginia Tech (VT). SAGE3 receives major funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), awards #2004014 (UHM), #2003800 (UIC) and #2003387 (VT). 
SAGE, SAGE2 and SAGE3 are trademarks of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees.

SAGE3 Principal Investigator (PI) Jason Leigh, co-PI Luc Renambot and other SAGE3 Team members introduce and demo SAGE3 to the PRAGMA community as part of its 2021 Re-Connect Webinar series.

SAGE3 Introduction & Demo to PRAGMA and CineGrid - RECORDINGS AVAILABLE

PRAGMA is hosting a Zoom-based SAGE3 presentation and live demonstration by SAGE3 Principal Investigator (PI) Jason Leigh and co-PI Luc Renambot as well as other SAGE3 Team members. In addition, SAGE2 users Prapaporn (Nan) Rattanatamrong of Thammasat University in Thailand and Jason Haga of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in Japan start the presentation with several ongoing SAGE2 use cases. 
This presentation is part of the 2021 Re-Connect Webinar series organized by the PRAGMA (Pacific Rim Application and Grid Middleware Assembly) organization. Many PRAGMA members are long-time SAGE users. 
Since receiving an NSF award for SAGE3, the Smart Amplified Group Environment, in May 2020, the SAGE3 Team has been hard at work designing and developing SAGE3. An alpha version of the SAGE3 remote collaboration platform is being presented. 
SAGE3 is being designed to integrate AI technologies with applications, visualization workflows and collaboration services. SAGE3 takes advantage of major technological and sociological changes that have occurred since SAGE2 was introduced in 2013. Notably, web browsers and languages are maturing; scientific communities are relying on notebooks; science workloads incorporate AI programs and programmable infrastructure; and, given the pandemic, the workplace is changing to hybrid office/home environments that require not just video-teleconferencing but data-driven tools for largely distributed groups. 
All are welcome to attend! No pre-registration is required. 
Asia: Aug 27 (Friday), 8am(WIB/ICT) / 9am(MYT/TST/PST) / 10am(JST/KST) 
US: Aug 26 (Thursday), 6pm(PDT) / 8pm(CDT) / 9pm(EDT) / 3pm(HST) 
Zoom: 
<a HREF="https://hawaii.zoom.us/j/96474855666?pwd=UTBNYU4wQkJnc1c2cGwxdkxCTFBCZz09
">https://hawaii.zoom.us/j/96474855666?pwd=UTBNYU4wQkJnc1c2cGwxdkxCTFBCZz09</a> 
Meeting ID: 964 7485 5666 
Passcode: sage3 
The SAGE3 presentation and demonstration were first done for the CineGrid organization in June 2021. However, if you were unable to see it then, we urge you to tune into the PRAGMA webinar and then ask questions of SAGE3 Team members. This presentation will be recorded and available at a later date. 
SAGE3 is being developed by the Laboratory for Advanced Visualization and Applications (LAVA) and the Hawaii Data Science Institute (HI-DSI) at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UHM), the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), and the Sanghani Center for AI and Data Analytics (Sanghani) at Virginia Tech (VT). SAGE3 receives major funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation, awards #2004014 (UHM), #2003800 (UIC) and #2003387 (VT). SAGE, SAGE2 and SAGE3 are trademarks of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees.

Introducing SAGE3 - Zoom event hosted by PRAGMA

The IBHE has approved the request for a Bachelor&rsquo;s of Science (BS) degree in both Computer Science and Design effective for the Fall 2022 admissions and course cycle. This interdisciplinary degree officially culminates in EVL&rsquo;s long standing mission to support collaborative work between artists, scientist, engineers and technologists going back over 40 years. Electronic visualization and electronic art design have been the foundation of EVL&rsquo;s work since its inception in 1973, established by founding co-directors Tom DeFanti and Dan Sandin. 
We are extremely pleased for UIC to offer an official BS in CS and Design.

Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Design Approved by the Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE)

The National Institutes of Health: National Cancer Institute has awarded Liz Marai and collaborators at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center a Research Supplement to Promote Diversity in Health-Related Research Programs, for federal award R01CA258827, &ldquo;Longitudinal Spatial-Nonspatial Decision Support for Competing Outcomes in Head and Neck Cancer Therapy&rdquo; to run 2021 -2024. The award will support the interdisciplinary training of Dr. Rachel Glenn, an individual from a disadvantaged background (as defined by PA-21-071), under the direction of PIs Marai (UIC) and Fuller (U of Texas).

G. Elisabeta Marai Awarded NIH Diversity Supplement

G. Elisabeta Marai and collaborators are recognized with the 10-years Test of Time award at ISMB 2021, the flagship conference for computational biology, for the most impactful paper on biovisualization, awarded by the BioVis ISMB COSI (a COSI is a main track at the ISMB conference). The award was made to: Smith AM, Xu W, Sun Y, Faeder JR, Marai GE. &ldquo;RuleBender: integrated modeling, simulation and visualization for rule-based intracellular biochemistry.&rdquo; BMC Bioinformatics. 2012 Dec;13(8):1-6. This research was originally presented at the 2011 Conference, and is listed a later year due to the journal publication model. RuleBender is a system for the rule-based visualization, modeling and simulation of intracellular biochemistry. 
Beyond the impressive citation record, which shows that this work informed both bioinformatics research and data visualization research, RuleBender is alive and well. It has been remarkably stable over the past ten years, it is still downloaded and used, averaging about 1000 downloads per year in the past five years alone. It has been adopted at over 40 institutions as a research and educational tool. It has been used by at least hundreds of computational biologists to do real and high impact research all over the world, from Ghana to Canada. 
Co-authors Adam, Wen and Yao were Marai&rsquo;s Masters students in 2011 and are now senior software engineers at Argo AI, Microsoft, and Amazon. Jim was a collaborator in Systems Biology at Pitt/CMU.

&ldquo;RuleBender&rdquo; Recognized with Test of Time Award

Candidate: Abeer Alsaiari 
DATE: Thursday, July 15, 2021 
TIME: 1:30PM 
LOCATION: <a href="https://uic.zoom.us/j/83926742060?pwd=RnpVMWJscGE3R3VBajJZaGo0SSs2QT09">Zoom Link</a> 
Meeting ID: 839 2674 2060 
Passcode: Mt5zBdqA 
Committee Members: Andrew Johnson (Chair and advisor), Joseph Michaelis, Wei Tang, Steve Jones (Department of Communication), Khairi Reda (Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis) 
Abstract: 
There is a steadily growing interest in leveraging ecosystems of digital devices that go beyond a single desktop for collaborative visual data analysis and exploration. This new thrust of multi-device interfaces supports new models for complex collaboration scenarios and has great potential to support analysts in their data analysis by utilizing each device&rsquo;s capabilities. However, there are some challenges inherently associated with visual data analysis in multi-device environments (MDE). This dissertation investigates how the analytical process occurs in multi-user multi-device environments to provide a theoretical understanding of collaborative exploratory visual data analysis and better inform the design of visualization tools. First, I touched on the challenges of designing cross-device visualization tools by introducing the design and implementation of a multi-device system for collaborative visual data analysis that enables cross-device visualization sharing and simultaneous interaction. Then, through an exploratory user study, I evaluated strategies of exploratory visual data analysis in a collaborative multi-user multi-device environment. I synthesized a two-level characterization of the analysis structure from observed analysis behaviors. I observed that subjects navigate the data space in three identified exploration patterns and the analysis was primarily depth-oriented. In addition, the cost of deciding what to explore next &ldquo;Gulf of Goal Formation&rdquo; is higher in collaborative settings due to short-term memory and the recency effect. I hypothesized that visualizing the dimensions search space would increase the breadth of the analysis and reduce the decision cost. Using a between-groups study, I evaluated the effect of revealing information about what dimension&rsquo;s data space coverage(s) were investigated and what were left. The results indicate that visualizing dimensions search space increases the breadth of the analysis and reduces the decision cost by positively affecting the rate of views generation.

PhD Dissertation Announcement: Supporting Collaborative Exploratory Visual Data Analysis in Multi-device Environments

Candidate: Jillian Aurisano 
DATE: Friday, July 9, 2021 
TIME: 1:00PM 
LOCATION: <a href="https://uic.zoom.us/j/84367747564?pwd=T3NiZUR3cjQwanQxa0JiaC92RXQzUT09">Zoom Link</a> 
Meeting ID: 843 6774 7564 
Passcode: 6DwiV1hA 
Committee Members: Andrew Johnson (chair), Barbara Di Eugenio, G. Elisabeta Marai, Debaleena Chattopadhyay, Moira Zellner 
Abstract:
Visual data exploration stands to benefit from environments that permit users to view and juxtapose many views of data, particularly views that present diverse selections of data values and attributes. Large, high-resolution environments are capable of showing many related views of data, but efficiently creating and displaying visualizations in these environments presents significant challenges. In this talk, I will present my research on &ldquo;multi-view data exploration interactions&rdquo; that enable users to create and pivot many views at once, creating sets of views with coherent data value and attribute variations, through multi-modal speech and mid-air pointing gestures in large display environments. This work enables users to rapidly and efficiently generate sets of views in support of multi-view data exploration tasks, organize these views in coherent collections, and operate on sets of views collectively, rather than individually, to efficiently reach large portions of the &rsquo;data and attribute space&rsquo;. I will present three contributions: 1) an observational study of data exploration in a large display environment with speech and mid-air gestures, 2) &rsquo;Traverse&rsquo;, an interaction technique for data exploration, based on this study, which uses natural language to create and pivot sets of views, and 3) &rsquo;Ditto&rsquo;, a multi-modal speech and mid-air pointing gesture interactive environment, which utilizes the multi-view data exploration technique, in large display environments.

PhD Dissertation Announcement: Multi-view, multi-modal speech and mid-air gesture interaction for data exploration in large display environments

Candidate Name: Krishna Bharadwaj 
Date: Tuesday, July 6th, 2021 
Time: 2:00PM 
Location: <a href="https://uic.zoom.us/j/82883119453?pwd=SVMvMUhQZGFCZWtSUnFEZmFiSWl3Zz09">Zoom Link</a> 
Meeting ID: 828 8311 9453 
Passcode: kbEVL8phd 
Committee Members: Andrew Johnson (Chair and Advisor), G. Elisabeta Marai, Debaleena Chattopadhyay, Steve Jones (Department of Communication), Jason Leigh (University of Hawaii at Manoa), Thomas J. Marrinan (University of St. Thomas) 
Abstract: 
Collaborative Virtual Environments have been increasingly used in supporting group work. Several collaborative systems have come up in recent years as a way of meeting the ever-changing needs of group work, with asymmetric setups being the latest addition to a diverse collection of systems. In recent years, we see attempts at multi-domain collaboration. Research on interdisciplinary collaboration reveals a need for supporting a hybrid of tools and representations that are familiar to users of different domains. 
In this dissertation, I present a prototype implementation of a Hybrid Collaborative Virtual Environment that combines multiple representations to facilitate multi-domain collaboration. Preliminary evaluation of the prototype showed that hybridization of different representations can lead to role formation due to dependency on representations, when users are limited to interacting with a single representation. Integrating shared views and shared interaction into this Hybrid Collaborative Virtual Environment with the help of a large shared display environment can help solve the representational dependency issue. Shared views and shared interactions enable users to freely interact with any of the different representations and also eases communication amongst them. I evaluate this integration by means of a formal study having a within group design: A group of three participants perform collaborative tasks using the Hybrid Collaborative Virtual Environment with and without the integration of shared views and shared interactions. I discuss the results of the study and show how shared views and shared interaction improves the collaborative experience.

Collaborative System

PhD Dissertation Announcement: Hybrid Collaborative Virtual Environments

<ahref="https://today.uic.edu/uics-hummingbird-play-a-union-between-design-engineering-and-theater-in-virtual-reality?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=today%2B06.29.21">UIC Today</a> covers the &ldquo;Hummingbird&rdquo; project, a collaboration between UIC and the Goodman Theatre that blends VR storytelling and theatrical performance with the goal of encouraging stronger theatrical engagement with a tech-savvy younger generation audiences. It is an immersive play that was the brainchild of Daria Tsoupikova, professor in the school of design, Jo Cattell, an award-winning theater director, and members of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), including Andrew Johnson, interim director and director of research. 
Workshop performances of &ldquo;Hummingbird&rdquo; were held at EVL June 18th through the 20th with a theatrical premiere planned for this coming fall.

&ldquo;Hummingbird&rdquo; Among UIC Today&rsquo;s Top Stories

Since receiving an <a href="http://sage3.sagecommons.org/">NSF award for SAGE3</a>, the Smart Amplified Group Environment, in May 2020, the SAGE3 Team has been hard at work designing and developing SAGE3. An alpha version of the SAGE3 remote collaboration platform is being developed, and the Team will give a Zoom-based SAGE3 presentation and demonstration as part of the CineGrid organization&rsquo;s Summer Community Forum series. All are welcome to attend! 
Jason Leigh and Luc Renambot will be presenting next-generation SAGE3 along with the rest of the Team. Jason and Luc are CineGrid founding members and SAGE/SAGE2/SAGE3 inventors and architects. The CineGrid organization previously focused on the use of advanced networks for digital media processing, analysis, transformation and preservation, but more recently it is focusing on Artificial Intelligence (AI) research and its relevance to digital media. 
SAGE3 is being designed to integrate AI technologies with applications, visualization workflows and collaboration services. SAGE3 takes advantage of major technological and sociological changes that have occurred since SAGE2 was introduced in 2013. Notably, web browsers and languages are maturing; scientific communities are relying on notebooks; science workloads incorporate AI programs and programmable infrastructure; and, given the pandemic, the workplace is changing to hybrid office/home environments that require not just video-teleconferencing but data-driven tools for largely distributed groups. 
All are welcome to attend the CineGrid Community Forum. There will be two SAGE3 sessions to accommodate international audiences; both sessions will present the same content, though the audience and questions may vary. 
* Tuesday, June 22 at 4:30pm - 6:00pm PDT 
* Wednesday, June 23 at 10am - 11:30am PDT 
Registration is required for each session, but there is no cost. To register, <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/cinegrid-community-forum-june-tickets-156005222821">click here</a>. 
This event has been recorded and available on the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyE09TxwhPE">CineGrid Community Forum archive website</a>. 
SAGE3 is being developed by the Laboratory for Advanced Visualization and Applications (LAVA) and the Hawaii Data Science Institute (HI-DSI) at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UHM), the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), and the Sanghani Center for AI and Data Analytics (Sanghani) at Virginia Tech (VT). SAGE3 receives major funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation, awards #2004014 (UHM), #2003800 (UIC) and #2003387 (VT). SAGE, SAGE2 and SAGE3 are trademarks of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees.

Jason Leigh, UHM, is the primary principal investigator and inventor of SAGE/SAGE2/SAGE3.

Introducing SAGE3 - Zoom event hosted by the CineGrid Community Forum

Congratulations to Daria Tsoupikova in collaboration with award winning theater director Jo Cattell and their team, including application developers - EVL PhD candidates Arthur Nishimoto and Sai Priya, Computer Science professor / EVL interim director Andrew Johnson, and project network engineering lead Lance Long! The theater team and actors include Denise Savas (stage manager), Devonte Washington (actor/assistant stage manager), Stephanie Shum (lead actor), Liviu Passare (videographer). 
The following story appears in the <a href="http://digitaledition.chicagotribune.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=2f768537-b6cd-42bd-af70-f5fa419357fe">Chicago Tribune, June 22, 2021</a>. 
Erratum: The article lists funding sources but incorrectly identifies the amounts of funding received. Hummingbird received the UI Presidential Award for Art and Humanities in 2019 for $150,000, the UIC Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research Creative Activity award in in 2020 for $10,000, and the National Endowment for the Arts in 2021 for $20,000. 
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 
Virtual-reality play: 
UIC debuts &rsquo;Hummingbird,&rsquo; allowing audience to participate in the story 
BY DARCEL ROCKETT CHICAGO TRIBUNE 
June 22, 2021 
Live theaters have yet to reopen as much of the state has, but when they do, take comfort in the fact that there are people working on taking the traditional theater-going experience to the next level. 
A group of designers and developers from the University of Illinois at Chicago&rsquo;s Electronic Visualization Laboratory in collaboration with award-winning theater director Jo Cattell, are making theater more participatory with virtual reality. The goal was realized this past weekend, June 18-20, when a variety of people ranging from preteen to retirement age were invited to partake in the immersive play &ldquo;Hummingbird.&rdquo; 
&ldquo;The whole idea here is moving in space and doing things together,&rdquo; said Daria Tsoupikova, a professor in the School of Design at UIC. &ldquo;You’re not just passive observer, you&rsquo;re actively participating.&rdquo; 
The approximately half-hour event took place in the Engineering Research building with a group of willing participants, including this Chicago Tribune reporter. Upon entering, each guest dons a lab coat and fills out a questionnaire about their soul: How old is it? When&rsquo;s the last time it was fed/replenished? After name tags are given, the group is introduced to a main character in the play, Aya, the teenage daughter of Demi, a Gerard Corp. employee. Aya is a bit antsy, but speaks her own mind; she is our guide along the experience. 
Participants follow Aya into a room where everyone is outfitted with their own Oculus Quest, an untethered virtual-reality headset with embedded tracking and touch controllers that enable multi-user interaction. At this time, the group is introduced to Gerard, a more contemporary version of Max Headroom, with better makeup, blond wig and more sass. Gerard is a floating head that talks back to Aya in real time. Gerard built Gerard Corp. to create Hummingbird technology, and he captured Demi, the talented scientist and mom of Aya. 
What follows is a collaborative team effort to escape Gerard&rsquo;s world of Zen gardens, flashlight-esque stalactites, moving statues, talking fauna and rocks by finding clues to lead us out and save Aya&rsquo;s mom. There&rsquo;s underground work, underwater work and even aerial work. As avatars, we all have different colors and stick-figure faces. The only thing that doesn&rsquo;t change is the participants&rsquo; voices. We all can talk to one another to communicate, do tasks together and problem solve. The colors, the sound design and camaraderie with strangers keeps everyone engaged with the play and one another. 
The project was designed for Goodman Theater New Stages 2020, showcasing experimental and groundbreaking theater works. The goal: to have participants attend tele-immersive, real-time performances running concurrently at the Goodman Theatre&rsquo;s Alice Rapport Center and at UIC, allowing for untethered social interaction and collaborative exploration of the plot lines through avatars. 
&ldquo;It&rsquo;s supposed to be totally immersive, it&rsquo;s supposed to be in real time, and the group at the Goodman and the group in here, they meet with each other and collaboratively explore the virtual space in co-located events, but inside virtual reality,&rdquo; Tsoupikova said. 
It&rsquo;s a meeting of art, science and live theater, where professional actors from the Goodman join with UIC faculty and students from the Department of Computer Science, School of Design and the Electronic Visualization Laboratory. The lab is known around the world for having introduced CAVE VR theater to the world In 1992 and in 2012, the CAVE2 VR theater. 
Tsoupikova says &ldquo;Hummingbird&rdquo; is to be conducted in more than one location simultaneously. The production targets youth, ages 11 and older, in under-served Chicago communities who lack access to the performing arts within their schools. 
&ldquo;We want to engage underrepresented Chicago youth - a tech-savvy younger audience through the use of
technology to engage them in the theater, because the theater attendance rates among youth are dropping,&rdquo; Tsoupikova said. &ldquo;We really want to show them that this is the future of storytelling, this is how it can be, and the theaters that productions through collaborative design like this is possible.&rdquo; 
According to Tsoupikova, the multi-user theatrical performance was conceptualized in 2018 and supported by a UI Presidential Award for Art and Humanities and an Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research Creative Activity award. A 2019 six-figure grant from the National Endowment of the Arts also helped with the development of the technology, creation of virtual scenes, scripted audience tracks, stage sets and professional actors. With the Goodman being the first major nonprofit Chicago theater to return to live performances on July 30, Tsoupikova hopes &ldquo;Hummingbird&rdquo; will open at Goodman Theatre this fall. 
&ldquo;My son hasn&rsquo;t been able to play with anyone, given the pandemic for 15 months, and for him to be so excited to be in a room with four other kids and suddenly to be interacting with people was like a dream come true,&rdquo; said &ldquo;Hummingbird&rdquo; director and writer Cattell. &ldquo;That was something nice to see, and (to) be able to give him a controlled environment where he can play with people again. I hope that continues - kids being really excited to be in a situation where it’s a different type of playground, it&rsquo;s a technical playground, because that&rsquo;s what we&rsquo;re really trying to create: a playground for everyone to play in.&rdquo;

Genevieve Thiers participates Sunday in &ldquo;Hummingbird&rdquo; at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Virtual-reality play: UIC debuts &rsquo;Hummingbird,&rsquo; allowing audience to participate in the story

EVL hosts the pilot performances of &ldquo;HUMMINGBIRD&rdquo; the multiuser theatrical work that merges real and virtual worlds, engaging tech-savvy youth with a highly interactive virtual reality experience. This innovative project combines elements of traditional theater with virtual storytelling where participants collaborate to traverse virtual worlds and accomplish goals while being led by actors throughout their experience. 
EVL, the Department of Computer Science, and the College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts faculty and students in collaboration with award-winning Immersive Theatre Director Jo Cattell are organizing the pilot performance on June 18-20. This ambitious project involves a large team of faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, Goodman Theater Directors, actors, producers, a professional music composer, sound engineer, and many other contributors. This project is supported by the University of Illinois Presidential Award for Art and Humanities, the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research Creative Activity Award, and the National Endowment for the Arts. 
The project team consists of School of Design professor, Daria Tsoupikova, award-winning theater director Jo Cattell, application developers and PhD candidates Arthur Nishimoto and Sai Priy Jyouthua, professor and EVL interim director Andrew Johnson, and project network engineering lead Lance Long. The theater team and actors include Denise Savas (stage manager), Devonte Washington (actor/assistant stage manager), Stephanie Shum (lead actor), Liviu Passare (videographer). 
Pilot performances are by invitation only. Stay tuned for the upcoming premiere this fall hosted by EVL and Goodman Theatre&rsquo;s Alice Rapport Center.

Pilot Performances of &ldquo;HUMMINGBIRD&rdquo; Collaborative Virtual Reality for Tele-Immersive Interactive Theater

EVL faculty member and computer science associate professor Liz Marai has been appointed to co-chair the full papers session at the 23rd edition of EuroVis 2021. The EuroVis conference objective is to create and strengthen connections between visualization researchers and practitioners, to foster collaborations, and to draw more researchers into the rapidly growing area of visualization research. EuroVis has an expanded its scope to include all areas of visualization towards more wide-spread visibility and impact. 
EuroVis 2021 will be hosted by the University of Zurich in collaboration with FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg and ETH Zurich. EuroVis is the annual Visualization Conference organized by the Eurographics Working Group on Data Visualization. This year&rsquo;s conference will be held virtually June 14 - 18, 2021. 
Liz joins Rita Borgo, King&rsquo;s College London, UK and Tatiana von Landesberger, University of Rostock, Germany to co-chair the full papers session focusing on bu not limited to visualization techniques, systems, applications & design studies, evaluation & empirical research, and theory. 
Congratulations, Liz on this prestigious role and your tireless work as an ambassador for visualization research!

Associate Professor Liz Marai co-Chairs Full Papers Session for EuroVis21

EVL alumnni Khairi Reda&rsquo;s and Mike Papka&rsquo;s paper entitled &ldquo;Color Nameability Predicts Inference Accuracy in Spatial Visualizations&ldquo; will be awarded the Best Paper award at EuroVis&rsquo;21. Reda will present their research Tuesday June 15th 8:00AM CST. The conference registration is free for all non-presenters see <a href="https://www.eurovis.org/index.php/for-attendees/program/">https://www.eurovis.org/index.php/for-attendees/program/</a> to register. 
Khairi received his PhD at EVL in 2014, and Mike Papka got his MS at EVL in 1994. 
&ldquo;Color Nameability Predicts Inference Accuracy in Spatial Visualizations&rdquo; 
Authors: Reda, K., Salvi, A.A., Gray, J., Papka, M.E. 
Abstract: 
Color encoding is foundational to visualizing quantitative data. Guidelines for colormap design have traditionally emphasized perceptual principles, such as order and uniformity. However, colors also evoke cognitive and linguistic associations whose role in data interpretation remains underexplored. We study how two linguistic factors, name salience and name variation, affect people&rsquo;s ability to draw inferences from spatial visualizations. In two experiments, we found that participants are better at interpreting visualizations when viewing colors with more salient names (e.g., prototypical &rsquo;blue&rsquo; &rsquo;yellow&rsquo;, and &rsquo;red&rsquo; over &rsquo;teal&rsquo;, &rsquo;beige&rsquo;, and &rsquo;maroon&rsquo;). The effect was robust across four visualization types, but was more pronounced in continuous (e.g., smooth geographical maps) than in similar discrete representations (e.g., choropleths). Participants&rsquo; accuracy also improved as the number of nameable colors increased, although the latter had a less robust effect. Our findings suggest that color nameability is an important design consideration for quantitative colormaps, and may even outweigh traditional perceptual metrics. In particular, we found that the linguistic associations of color are a better predictor of performance than the perceptual properties of those colors. We discuss the implications and outline research opportunities. The data and materials for this study are available at <a href="https://osf.io/asb7n">https://osf.io/asb7n</a>.

EVL alumni Khairi Reda and Mike Papka win Best Paper award at EuroVis&rsquo;21

EVL Research Experience Undergraduate (REU) and Computer Science alum (BS 2020) Jonathan Vega discusses the impact of his data visualization research. Under EVL faculty member and Computer Science associate professor G. Elisabeta Marai&rsquo;s supervision Vega undertook the task of studying and visualizing contrails - water vapor and engine exhaust emitted from airplanes. His work helped create a simulation that captured the part that contrails play in climate change. 
Most significantly, Vega&rsquo;s research led him to discover more about the relationship between contrails, climate change and the potential impact upon the Colorado River and his Native American tribe&rsquo;s daily lives, including food, tribal traditions and ceremonies. Unbeknownst to Vega when he embarked on his REU was how the data visualization of contrails could be directly linked to his tribal community and global warming. 
Vega&rsquo;s work earned him the UIC Chancellor&rsquo;s Undergraduate Research Award in 2020. 
See the full article in the <a href="https://cs.uic.edu/news-stories/data-visualizations-unite-water-and-air/">Computer Science News</a>.

UIC Alum Jonathan Vega&rsquo;s Data Visualization Research Featured in CS News

EVL faculty and computer science (CS) associate professor Liz Marai in collaboration with co-investigator, CS assistant professor Xinhua Zhang are developing a computational artificial intelligence system to serve as a decision support tool for oncologists prescribing treatment for head and neck cancer. The research entitled &ldquo;Longitudinal Spatial-Nonspatial Decision Support for Competing Outcomes in Head and Neck Cancer Therapy&rdquo; is supported by a $2.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health NIH grant #R01CA258827 with co-investigators at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and the University of Iowa. The goal is to develop a scalable system based on real cancer patient data that can help guide physicians in how to treat specific patients. 
Marai and Zhang are using the computational resources at Electronic Visualization Laboratory to develop their cancer treatment AI. Guadalupe Canahuate of the University of Iowa and Dr. David Fuller of the University of Texas are co-investigators on the NIH grant. 
See the full press release on <a href="https://today.uic.edu/maximizing-cancer-survival-minimizing-treatment-side-effects-with-ai">UIC Today</a> by Jacqueline Carey.

Collaborators examine a large dataset in EVL&rsquo;s CAVE2

Maximizing cancer survival, minimizing treatment side effects with AI

EVL founding co-director Dan Sandin discusses his pioneering real-time video performance work created between 1975 and 1978. The virtual event includes screenings of the Electronic Visualization Events (EVE) held at the University of Illinois at Chicago created by Dan Sandin and Tom DeFanti. These events were a place for students, faculty, and artists to create live communal video performances with an emphasis on Image Processing using the Sandin Analog IP. Event moderated by Jason Nebergall 
Virtual Screening and Discussion with Dan Sandin 
May 27, 2021, 4:00 PM PT / 6:00 PM CT / 7:00 PM ET 
See the recorded <a href=https://mediaburn.org/events/5-27-21-virtual-talks-with-video-activists-dan-sandin/>Media Burn Presentation </a> 
Daniel J. Sandin is an internationally recognized pioneer of electronic art and visualization. In 1969, Sandin developed a computer-controlled light and sound environment, called Glow Flow, at the Smithsonian Institution and was invited to join the art faculty at the University of Illinois the same year. By 1973 he had developed the Sandin Image Processor, a highly programmable analog computer for processing video images in real time. He then worked with DeFanti to combine the Image Processor with real-time computer graphics and performed visual concerts, the Electronic Visualization Events, with synthesized musical accompaniment. In 1991, Sandin and DeFanti conceived and developed, in collaboration with graduate students, the CAVE virtual-reality (VR) theater. In recent years, Sandin has been concentrating on the development of auto stereo VR displays (i.e., free viewing, no glasses), and on the creation of network-based tele-collaborative VR art works that involve video camera image materials, rich human interaction and mathematical systems.

Dan Sandin (center, with feathered hat), with other participants in live computer video performance at Electronic Visualization Event 2 in Chicago.

Virtual Talks with Video Activists: Dan Sandin

EVL faculty and Computer Science assistant professor Wei Tang has been working with Motorola to use computer vision to improve cell phone photos taken in low-light conditions. Dr. Tang&rsquo;s research focuses on the integration of deep neural networks with conventional image processing techniques to address complex computer vision problems. Specifically, Tang and his graduate student researchers are working on methods to deblur low-light cell phone images, to return a crisp, clean version of the picture. The process includes providing the neural network a series of images - both blurry and clean - to create a loss function, or learning objective, to identify the preferred images. The resulting deblurred images are then provided to the Motorola team to brighten the low-light photos for highly improved results. 
Tang&rsquo;s research interests in computer vision, pattern recognition and machine learning can also be applied to augmented reality and intelligent robotics applications. Stay tuned for updates in Tang's research and collaborations. 
Read the related <a href="https://cs.uic.edu/news-stories/wei-tang-using-computer-vision-to-improve-cell-phone-photos-taken-in-low-light-conditions/">CS e-newsletter</a> article by Andrea Poet for more detail.

Wei Tang&rsquo;s Machine Learning Researh Featured in UIC Computer Science e-News

Alumnus Jonathan Vega (BS 2020, Computer Science) presented his experiences and research as an undergrad at EVL entitled &ldquo;Visualization of parameters from multiple numeral simulations&rdquo; as part of the UIC Impact & Research Week. Jonathan&rsquo;s research, under the supervision of EVL associate professor Georgeta-Elisabeta Marai focused upon learning how to visualize a data set for intuitive analysis. Specifically, Jonathan used contrail data to evaluate particle temperature over a given range of time with the goal of better understanding the impact of contrails on global warming. This was of particular interest to Jonathan as he is a member of the Colorado River Indian Tribe with firsthand experience of global warning on the Colorado River. The tribe relies upon the River for everything from food to Tribal traditions and ceremonies. Research has shown that the River flow has slowed dues to global warming with negative impact. Jonathan&rsquo;s efforts not only resulted in a useful visualization tool, but his achievements were also recognized with the UIC Chancellor&rsquo;s Undergraduate Research Award. 
Jonathan&rsquo;s work contributed to research under NSF Award #CBET 1854815 &ldquo;Highperformance Computing and Data-driven Modeling of Aircraft Contrails&rdquo; PI Roberto Paoli (Mechanical and Industrial Engineering); co-PI G.Elisabeta Marai (Computer Science).

CURA Presentation, Jonathan Vega,4/7/21

2D Visualization of Particle&rsquo;s Temperature

Research Experience and Visualization of Parameters from Multiple Numerical Simulations

MS Candidate: Elisa Tardini 
Date: Wednesday, March 10, 2021 
Time: 9:30 am CT 
Location: <a href="https://uic.zoom.us/j/83263055512?pwd=UXdKZkRiNmsxR08vMFo3ZzU1VGQ3Zz09">Zoom Link</a> 
Meeting ID: 832 6305 5512 
Passcode: UPut2ew9 
Committee: Xinhua Zhang, G. Elisabeta Marai, Pier Luca Lanzi (Politecnico di Milano) 
Abstract: 
In recent years deep meta-reinforcement learning has extended the applicability of reinforcement learning algorithms: by integrating recurrent networks, trained models have the ability to quickly adapt to new unseen environments without the need for further backpropagation. We propose a novel recursive deep meta-reinforcement learning approach which enables the model of each decision of the sequential process to learn from and adapt to unseen circumstances by recursively integrating the feedback of the models of other decisions in the process. We apply this approach to a dataset of 3-step chemo-radiotherapeutic and surgical treatment of head and neck cancer patients, proving its ability to optimally handle previously unseen patient&rsquo;s (and physician&rsquo;s) preferences on survival and toxicity outcomes.

MS Thesis Defense Announcement: &ldquo;Recursive Meta-Reinforcement Learning for Personalized Sequential Dynamic Treatment Policies&rdquo;

National Institutes of Health: National Cancer Institute has awarded UIC funding to continue research in head and neck cancer therapy. UIC PI, EVL faculty and Computer Science associate professor Liz Marai in conjunction with co-PI Xinhua Zhang are joined by collaborators from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (Dave Fuller, PI) and the University of Iowa (Guadalupe Canahuate, PI) to develop a longitudinal decision support tool to assist clinicians in selecting treatments that balance survival and side-effects responses to cancer therapy. The project will lead to better insights into the biological and therapeutic factors related to cancer survival and toxicity, allowing personalization of care at the individual level. 
Title: Longitudinal Spatial-Nonspatial Decision Support for Competing Outcomes in Head and Neck Cancer Therapy 
PI: G. Elisabeta Marai, Co-PI: Xinhua Zhang 
Sponsor: National Institutes of Health: National Cancer Institute 
Dates: March 1, 2021 - Feb 28, 2026 
Amount: $2,797,868 
Grant Number: 1 R01 CA258827-01

NIH Awards &ldquo;Longitudinal Spatial-Nonspatial Decision Support for Competing Outcomes in Head and Neck Cancer Therapy&rdquo;

Join us in congratulating EVL faculty and School of Design professor Daria Tsoupikova who has been named the SIGGRAPH 2021 Art Papers Chair. Each year, hundreds of computer graphics researchers, professionals and technologists contribute their scientific innovations, technical achievements, and artistic accomplishments to the SIGGRAPH Art Papers venue. This is a juried and peer reviewed event, which comprises an unparalleled, collaborative experience that is one of the world&rsquo;s largest and most influential events at the intersection of art, science, and technology. 
Find out more about all of the SIGGRAPH Programs and join us online next summer for <a href="https://s2021.siggraph.org/">SIGGRAPH 2021</a>.

Events - 2021

2021 Spatial Data Science Symposium

SAGE3 Alpha Version Available - Users: Please Help Test and Provide Feedback

Goodman Theater New Stages Announces Staging of “HUMMINGBIRD”

2021 Outstanding Thesis/Dissertation Award to Elisa Tardini

EVL Alumna Josephine Anstey Introduces Her Animated Short “Pik and Etty in Progressive Taxation”

Associate Professor Liz Marai Recognized as 2020/2021 COE Teaching Award Recipient

Contact