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

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

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

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

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

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

Interactive Spherical Display Open House at EVL

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

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

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

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

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

Art on theMART Opening Invitation

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

SAGE3 beta version software and documentation will be introduced next week at the IEEE/ACM Supercomputing (SC22) conference in Dallas, Texas, USA, November 13-18, 2022. The SAGE User Community is invited to attend the SC22 Birds of a Feather (BOF) meeting and participate in ongoing SAGE3 demonstrations in the SC22 Exhibition. 
Attend the &ldquo;SAGE 12th SC BOF: Smart Amplified Group Environment Enhanced with Artificial Intelligence for Global Collaboration&rdquo;: 
 * Tuesday, November 15, 2022 
 *12:15PM - 01:15PM CST 
 * Room: D168, Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center Dallas 
 * <a href="https://sc22.supercomputing.org/presentation/?id=bof141&sess=sess312">https://sc22.supercomputing.org/presentation/?id=bof141&sess=sess312</a> 
Join us for SAGE3 demonstrations in the StarLight research booth # 2847 on the exhibition floor, Tuesday-Thursday. 
SAGE3, the Smart Amplified Group Environment, is the next-generation, &ldquo;human-in-the-loop&rdquo; collaboration platform, providing HPC users with the tools to access, explore, discover, publish, share, integrate, and reuse complex datasets. SAGE3 supports today&rsquo;s hybrid work/home environments (laptops, single monitors and display walls), and interfaces with a variety of computational infrastructures, workflows, notebooks, and analytics software through Artificial Intelligence-enabled services and orchestration services. It lowers the barrier of entry into AI for non-expert users, democratizing access to disruptive technologies for those with varying skills. 
The BOF will not be streamed. SAGE3 software and documentation will be available for download on the SAGE3 website. The SAGE3 team plans to hold SAGE3 educational webinars, starting next year. 
REMINDER: SAGE3 / SAGE2 COMMUNITY USER FORUMS are now hosted on Slack. To join, go to the <a href="https://sage3.sagecommons.org/">SAGE3 website</a> and click on the Support menu. 
 * For SAGE3, subscribe to the sage3-support channel. 
 * For SAGE2, subscribe to the sage2-support channel. 
Thank you for your longstanding support of SAGE and we look forward to continued collaborations. 
Maxine Brown 
SAGE team member 
<a href="mailto:maxine@uic.edu">maxine@uic.edu</a> 
SAGE3 is being developed by the Laboratory for Advanced Visualization and Applications (LAVA) and the Hawaii Data Science Institute (HI-DSI) at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UHM), the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), and the InfoVis Lab at Virginia Tech (VT). SAGE3 receives major funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), awards #2004014 (UHM), #2003800 (UIC) and #2003387 (VT). 
SAGE2 received major NSF support, award #ACI-1441963, to UHM and UIC. 
SAGE, SAGE2 and SAGE3 are trademarks of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees.

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

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

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

NOVEMBER 14-17, 2022 -- SAGE3 Team members announced the release of the SAGE3 alpha version at the IEEE/ACM Supercomputing 2022 (SC22) conference, held at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas, Texas, USA, November 14-18, 2022. Software and documentation are available on the SAGE3 website: 
<a href="https://sage3.sagecommons.org/">https://sage3.sagecommons.org/</a> 
The Team conducted ongoing SAGE3 demonstrations in the SC22 Exhibition and held its 12th SC Birds of a Feather (BOF) meeting to introduce current and potential users to SAGE3 features. You can learn about our SC22 activities and link to the BOF presentation, videos and photographs from the SAGE3 NEWS website: 
<a href="https://sage3.sagecommons.org/?p=807#more-807">https://sage3.sagecommons.org/?p=807#more-807</a> 
Note: Several long-time users have asked when server and client code will be released. The SAGE3 roadmap (see BOF presentation) targets February 1, 2023 for the SAGE3 Server release and March 1, 2023 for source code release. More information will be forthcoming. 
We hope you enjoy using SAGE3! Your feedback is always welcomed. 
REMINDER: SAGE3 / SAGE2 COMMUNITY USER FORUMS are now hosted on Slack. To join, go to the SAGE3 website and click on the Support menu. 
 * For SAGE3, subscribe to the sage3-support channel. 
 * For SAGE2, subscribe to the sage2-support channel. 
Maxine Brown 
SAGE team member 
<a href="mailto:maxine@uic.edu">maxine@uic.edu</a> 
SAGE3 is being developed by the Laboratory for Advanced Visualization and Applications (LAVA) and the Hawaii Data Science Institute (HI-DSI) at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UHM), the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), and the InfoVis Lab at Virginia Tech (VT). SAGE3 receives major funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), awards #2004014 (UHM), #2003800 (UIC) and #2003387 (VT). 
SAGE2 received major NSF support, award #ACI-1441963, to UHM and UIC. 
SAGE, SAGE2 and SAGE3 are trademarks of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees.

SAGE3&trade; Alpha Release Announced at SC22

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

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

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

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

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

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

Computer Science + Design Major

The SAGE3 Team has been quiet far too long, but we&rsquo;ve been very busy! Here&rsquo;s what to look forward to in the coming months: 
* SAGE3 beta version software with documentation will be released the week of the IEEE/ACM Supercomputing (SC22) conference, to be held in Dallas, Texas, USA, November 13-18, 2022. More information about the release will be forthcoming. For information on SC22, see: <a href="https://sc22.supercomputing.org/">https://sc22.supercomputing.org/</a> 
* A 1-hour SAGE3 Birds of a Feather (BoF) session and ongoing demonstrations and presentations will take place during SC22. At the BoF (Tuesday, Nov 15 from 12:15-13:15 in Room D168), the SAGE3 team will introduce the latest software release. The team will also share a booth in the research exhibition (StarLight booth #2847 as well as partner booths) and will conduct demos and presentations. More information will be forthcoming. 
* Educational SAGE3 webinars will be held, starting next year. Team members will present SAGE3&rsquo;s features and capabilities, provide use cases, answer questions, and solicit user feedback and use cases. More information will be forthcoming. 
Have you tried the SAGE3 alpha version for Linux, Windows and MacOS, which was released in December 2021? If not, go to the SAGE3 website, download the software and display client, and watch the &ldquo;How To&rdquo; video. 
<a href="https://sage3.sagecommons.org/">https://sage3.sagecommons.org/</a> 
REMINDER: SAGE3 / SAGE2 COMMUNITY USER FORUMS are now hosted on Slack. To join, go to the SAGE3 website and click on the Support menu: 
<a href="https://sage3.sagecommons.org/?page_id=60">https://sage3.sagecommons.org/?page_id=60</a> 
For SAGE3, subscribe to the sage3-support channel. 
For SAGE2, subscribe to the sage2-support channel. 
Thank you for your longstanding support of SAGE3 and we look forward to continued collaborations. 
Maxine Brown 
SAGE team member 
<a href="mailto:maxine@uic.edu">maxine@uic.edu</a> 
SAGE3 is being developed by the Laboratory for Advanced Visualization and Applications (LAVA) and the Hawaii Data Science Institute (HI-DSI) at University of Hawai&rsquo;i at Manoa (UHM), the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), and the InfoVis Lab at Virginia Tech (VT). SAGE3 receives major funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), awards #2004014 (UHM), #2003800 (UIC) and #2003387 (VT). 
SAGE2 received major NSF support, award #ACI-1441963, to UHM and UIC. 
SAGE, SAGE2 and SAGE3 are trademarks of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees.

Announcing SAGE3 Upcoming Events !!

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

Alum Michael E. Papka Joins EVL Faculty

Professor Andruid Kerne joins the Department of Computer Science and EVL as incoming faculty specializing in Human Computer Interaction. Kerne comes to UIC completing his assignment to the National Science Foundation (NSF) as a "rotator" program director, in the Division of Information and Intelligent Systems, Human-Centered Computing program, and professor at the Texas A&M Department of Computer Science and Engineering. His interest include transdisciplinary research and teaching with emphasis on investigating the future of human expression, integrating art and design with science. 
Kerne directs the Interface Ecology Lab, which addresses how to generate new knowledge by combining methods and their disciplines, where theory and practice are connected. Learn more about the Interface Ecology Lab and Andruid Kerne’s research activities, publications and participation at <a href=” https://ecologylab.net/”>https://ecologylab.net/</a>.

Andruid Kerne Joins EVL Faculty as Professor of Computer Science

Computer Science and EVL faculty member G. Elisabeta Marai has been promoted to Professor Academic Year 2022.  Dr. Marai&rsquo;s research focuses upon visual computing and analysis, an area of computer science that handles images, 3D models, and the interaction between humans and data that can be represented visually.  She has received several research awards with the National Science Foundation (NSF) and multi-site US National Institutes of Health (NIH) R01 awards.  Dr. Marai has also been recognized with outstanding research and teaching awards, and her research has been featured on journal and newsletter covers.  She has co-authored scientific open-source software adopted internationally and is a patent co-author whose ideas have been embedded in a medical device.  Dr. Marai is a valued faculty member, researcher and inventor who is well deserving of the promotion to Professor of Computer Science.  Congratulations!

G. Elisabeta Marai Promoted to Professor

Following the premiere of &ldquo;Hummingbird&rdquo; as part of the Chicago&rsquo;s Tony Award-winning Goodman Theatre New Stages Festival in December 2021, the virtual reality theatrical experience was exhibited at the SIGGRAPH 2022 Conference Immersive Pavilion held in Vancouver, CA, August 8-11th. Team members enhanced the existing experience to allow for a stand-alone version running consecutively for 4 days to sell-out audiences/participants - augmenting interactivity, animations, videography as well as upgrades to the underlying software and VR systems. By all accounts the exhibition was extremely well received and a success. 
&ldquo;Hummingbird: Multi-User Virtual Reality Theater for Collaborative Tele-Immersive Exploration&rdquo; is a modern, innovative performance, merging live theater and interactive virtual reality by bringing a group of active participants into a shared space for a live performance. This project bridges art, science and live theater through a collaborative research effort between computer science and design faculty and students at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) and Chicago theater directors, actors, videographers and producers. &ldquo;Hummingbird&rdquo; is developed by Daria Tsoupikova (Professor, School of Design); Andrew Johnson (Professor, EVL, Computer Science); Jo Cattell (Goodman Theatre); Lance Long (Senior Research Programmer, EVL, Computer Science); Arthur Nishimoto (PhD Candidate, EVL, Computer Science); Sai Jyothula Priya (PhD Candidate, EVL, Computer Science).

Participants engaged in the &ldquo;Hummingbird&rdquo; virtual reality performance at S2022.

&ldquo;Hummingbird&rdquo; Exhibited at SIGGRAPH 2022 (S2022)

Call for Papers 
--------------- 
There is widespread lack of accessibility in built environments, from roads and housing to public buildings and spaces. Such inaccessible urban infrastructure not only contributes to and further reinforces systemic exclusion of people with disabilities but also impacts public health, physical activity, and quality of life for all. To improve the design of our cities and to enable new accessibility-infused analytic tools and interactive maps, we need new data collection techniques, data standards, policies, and planning tools focused on the quality and accessibility of pathways, transit ecosystems, and buildings. 
The goal of our &ldquo;The Future of Urban Accessibility&rdquo; workshop is to bring together a community of scholars and practitioners across disciplines, disability identities, cultures, and geographies to discuss the state of urban accessibility and the role of interactive technologies therein. We invite short papers, including experience reports, position papers, vision pieces, demonstrations, pictorials, or research summaries up to 2,000 words on this topic (references excluded). Papers should not be anonymized and, in addition to their primary content, should include a bio of each author and rationale for attending the workshop. Papers will be reviewed and selected by the co-organizers to balance topics, geographies, and communities of focus. Accepted authors will be required to register and virtually attend the workshop via Zoom on Mon, Oct 17th. 
Please submit your papers/artifacts by Thu, Sep 1 at 11:59PM AoE. We are using Microsoft&rsquo;s Conference Management Toolkit to handle submissions <a href="https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/UrbanAccess2022/Submission/Index">(https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/UrbanAccess2022/Submission/Index)</a> 
Our overarching goal is to identify open challenges, share current work across disciplines, and spur new collaborations. As a secondary goal, we aim to synthesize and publish our discussions together in a jointly authored report perhaps to the SIGACCESS Newsletter or beyond. 
Please join us. We welcome your contributions! Email questions to: <a href="mailto:urbanaccess2022@cs.uw.edu">urbanaccess2022@cs.uw.edu</a>. 
Important dates 
--------------- 
Thu, Sep 1, 2022 (11:59PM AoE): Workshop submission deadline 
Fri, Sept 16, 2022: Acceptance notifications out 
Wed, Sept 28, 2022: Workshop camera ready deadline 
Mon, Oct 10, 2022: Accepted workshop content posted 
Mon, Oct 17, 2022 (tentative): Virtual workshop via Zoom 
Lead workshop organizers: 
--------------- 
Jon E. Froehlich, Computer Science, University of Washington 
Yochai Eisenberg, Disability & Human Development, University of Illinois, Chicago 
Maryam Hosseini, Urban Systems, Rutgers / NYU 
Fabio Miranda, Computer Science, University of Illinois, Chicago 
Full list of organizers: <a href="https://accessiblecities.github.io/UrbanAccess2022/#organizers">https://accessiblecities.github.io/UrbanAccess2022/#organizers</a>

The 1st <a href="https://accessiblecities.github.io/UrbanAccess2022/"> ASSETS&rsquo;22 Workshop</a> on The Future of Urban Accessibility

July 19th - 22nd, EVL hosted the SAGE3 research and development team to discuss the past year&rsquo;s major activities, significant results, key outcomes, other achievements, and future developments. Meeting topics include current SAGE3 usage patterns, user interface assessment and refinement, documentation improvements, future development requirements, as well as the dissemination of research results to the SAGE user community. 
&ldquo;SAGE3: Smart Amplified Group Environment for Harnessing the Data Revolution&rdquo; has been funded by the NSF CSI program to continue and advance its efforts on the SAGE collaboration and visualization framework. SAGE3 - Smart Amplified Group Environment - is the next-generation, &ldquo;human-in-the-loop&rdquo; collaboration platform with artificial intelligence (AI) enabled services that serve as a user’s &ldquo;co-pilot&rdquo; to autonomously manage and link disparate datasets and orchestrate services. Its predecessors, SAGE (Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment) in 2004 and second-generation SAGE2 (Scalable Amplified Group Environment) in 2013, are today&rsquo;s de facto operating systems to manage Big Data on tiled display walls, enabling users to collaborate locally and remotely and access, display, share and manipulate documents and visualizations. 
SAGE3 is being developed by renowned cyberinfrastructure experts from the Laboratory for Advanced Visualization and Applications (LAVA) and the Hawaii Data Science Institute (HI-DSI) at University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa (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 running on EVL Continuum Smart Space Tiled Display

EVL Hosts SAGE3 2022 All Hands Meeting

APLU&rsquo;s Council on Academic Affairs (CAA) provosts, chief academic officers, and senior vice presidents for academic affairs of APLU member institutions and systems visited EVL for presentations and CAVE2 virtual reality experiences during their 2022 Summer Meeting, July 18th. The annual meeting was hosted by the University of Illinois at Chicago July 17 - 19. This event provides a unique opportunity for senior leaders to meet in a private setting to network and discuss important topics of current interest. This year, the meeting focused on the pandemic&rsquo;s impact on faculty and student performance and engagement as well as their mental health issues, preparing students for the current and future workforce needs, and emerging uses of AI in higher education. 
See the detailed program <a href="https://web.cvent.com/event/fa3fc6ed-582b-413b-a6b0-0ca84442b020/websitePage:16f39142-8fd2-4e65-9685-e11be7fd120c">Agenda.</a>

APLU Visitors in EVL&rsquo;s CAVE2

APLU&rsquo;s Council on Academic Affairs (CAA) Visit EVL

Save the date for June 11th for the preview of the &ldquo;Chicago Design Through the Decades&rdquo; project on the <a href="https://artonthemart.com/">Art ontheMART</a> at the Merchandise Mart Chicago. A collaboration between the Chicago Design Archive and EVL and School of Design professor Daria Tsoupikova and EVL assistant professor Fabio Miranda, who created the AI/ML visualization for the last contemporary decade - 2010s. 
The exhibition will showcase works from the Chicago Design Archive taking viewers on a journey that begins in the 1920s with the era&rsquo;s painterly and illustrative techniques, evolves through the decades, and ends in the 2010s with digital rendering using AI and machine learning (ML)-technologies becoming increasingly prevalent in the contemporary landscape. 
This preview will be held for one day only to align with the opening of the NeoCon Design Conference to be held at the Merchandise Mart June 13-15. This is a FREE OUTDOOR public event to be held at the corner of West Wacker Drive and North Orleans Streets on the Riverwalk.

Work by Choral, Marlena Novak & Jay Yim as part of Art onTheMart

Art ontheMart Features &ldquo;Chicago Design Through the Decades&rdquo;

Computer Science assistant professor and EVL faculty Fabio Miranda&rsquo;s research in visualization is featured in the <a href="https://hebdenbridgenews.com/mapping-cities-health-and-environment-at-uics-electronic-visualization-lab/">HEBDEN BRIDGE NEWS</a>, &ldquo;Mapping cities, health and environment at UIC&rsquo;s Electronic Visualization Lab&rdquo;. Miranda&rsquo;s work focuses on urban planning, but touches upon a broad range of problems, including accessibility and mobility, environmental pollution, extreme climate. He uses computer simulation and visualization to address urban and real-life problems.

Fabio Miranda&rsquo;s Research Garners Media Coverage

School of Design and EVL professor Daria Tsoupikova has been recognized with the UIC Award for Creative Activity for 2022-2023. Daria is among 42 faculty members awarded to continue their pursuits of creative scholarship and activities at UIC. Daria will use this award to further enhance and showcase &ldquo;Hummingbird: Collaborative Virtual Reality for Tele-Immersive Interactive Theater
Virtual Reality&rdquo; developed in collaboration with Chicago&rsquo;s Goodman Theatre. This innovative work merges real and virtual worlds for tele-immersive interaction with the goal of encouraging stronger theater engagement with tech-savvy younger audiences. Participants follow the story&rsquo;s protagonist into an immersive virtual world reminiscent of Japanese paintings. This tele-immersive, interactive experience reimagines theatrical storytelling. 
The project bridges art, science and live theater through a collaborative research effort between computer science and design faculty and students at EVL and Chicago&rsquo;s Goodman Theatre. 
<a href="https://today.uic.edu/uic-awards-for-creative-activity-2?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=today%2B05.24.22">See UIC News for more information.</a>

Project Development at EVL

Daria Tsoupikova Awarded with UIC Award for Creative Activity

Professor and EVL interim director and director of research, Andrew Johnson participated with Matt Bubabla and Judy Pielach on their radio <a href="https://post.futurimedia.com/wlsam/playlist/listen-12063.html">show WLS-AM 890</a> to discuss UIC&rsquo;s involvement on the first &ldquo;Star Wars&rdquo; movie. In 1976, California artist Larry Cuba was hired by George Lucas to produce the special effects for the film&rsquo; s &rsquo;Trench Scene&rsquo;. Exploring possibilities for the scene, Cuba sought out the expertise of experimental computer graphics artists Tom DeFanti and Dan Sandin, co-directors of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory of the University of Illinois Circle Campus, as it was named at the time. Cuba proceeded to use EVL computer graphics technology to digitize the &rsquo;Death Star&rsquo;, which was later converted to film for the movie. Presently, the computer technology used to produce the scene is still functioning and archived by long-time EVL collaborator Steve Heminover.

Still of the Death Star

May the 4th be with you!

Candidate: Juan Trelles Trabucco 
Date: Friday, April 29, 2022 
Time: 11 am CT 
Committee Members: Dr. G. Elisabeta Marai, Dr. Andy Johnson, Dr. Wei Tang, Dr. Steven Drucker, Dr. Cecilia Arighi 
Abstract: 
Biomedical researchers need to search over an increasing number of publications to find knowledge. Among these researchers, biocurators specialize in identifying relevant publications and extracting information to populate structured databases. Efforts from biocuration groups benefit a much larger community who access this curated information daily. To effectively deal with the extensive collection of documents, the biocuration workflow uses text-mining approaches to automate tasks, such as predicting the relevance of a publication. While exploiting patterns in text data has yielded significant breakthroughs for biocuration, images in publications contain important cues to determine the document's relevance. Still, integrating these image content with textual features is underexplored due to difficulties collecting images, defining classification schemes, and having access to domain experts for data labeling. 
Rooted in a years-long collaboration with text-mining researchers and biocurators, I propose strategies for harvesting labels from biomedical publications and modeling image classifiers to support biocuration. First, I present two approaches for training image classifiers with deep learning for small and unbalanced datasets. Then, I characterize the labeling task in biocuration and introduce a labeling system tailored for domain experts. Next, I build on lessons from this labeling system to develop a labeling approach for model builders by combining visual analytics and machine learning techniques. These works provide the building blocks for the future design of search interfaces that leverage text- and image-based data for biomedical experts. In addition, it supports the development of novel multi-modal approaches for detecting publication's relevance and interpreting these predictions.

Biomedical Image Classification Application User-Interface

PhD Prelim Announcement: Integrating Image Features to Support the Biocuration Workflow

Long-time EVLer and PhD candidate Arthur Nishimoto has been recognized by the UIC College of Engineering with the 2022 Exceptional Research Promise Award.  Arthur began his work with EVL in 2009 as a Research Experience Undergraduate developing virtual reality and visualization applications for collaborative research between EVL and NASA.  After graduating with his bachelorette degree, Arthur pursued a MS in computer science with focus on advanced visualization, virtual reality and real-time interactive application development.  Since 2014, Arthur has been working towards his PhD (expected Summer 2022), has been an incredibly prolific and valued member of EVL.  Arthur is well-deserving of this honor.  We look forward to seeing him continue his exceptional research over his career.

EVL PhD Candidate Arthur Nishimoto Recognized with the COE Exceptional Research Promise Award

This year, UIC Computer Science PhD students and Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) research assistants Sai Priya Jyothula and Arthur Nishimoto received an Honorable Mention in the campus&rsquo; 2022 Image of Research competition. Priya Jyothula&rsquo;s and Nishimoto&rsquo;s work &ldquo;Dōkutsu&rdquo; (cave in Japanese) is a representation of HummingbirdVR, a multi-user interactive virtual reality theatrical experience presented during the New Stages 2021 festival by the Chicago Goodman Theatre. The project aims to make live theater more accessible to younger audiences and bring cutting-edge virtual reality interaction techniques into a live theatrical performance. 
It should be noted that as in previous years&rsquo; judging, EVL&rsquo;s large tiled display system, the CAVE2 hybrid reality environment was used to display all the entries at once in high resolution for easy comparison and grouping. 
EVL students have participated in and received recognition in all previous annual Image of Research competitions beginning in 2008 through 2018. 
<a href="https://grad.uic.edu/funding-awards/the-image-of-research/ior-winners-hm/">See the complete list of Image of Research 2022 winners.</a>

Dōkutsu

EVL Students Recognized in 2022 UIC Image of Research Competition

EVL at the University of Illinois Chicago has joined Chameleon! Chameleon is a large-scale, deeply reconfigurable experimental platform built to support Computer Sciences systems research. Publicly available since 2015, Chameleon supports projects ranging from systems research developing new operating systems, virtualization methods, performance variability studies, and power management research to projects in software-defined networking, artificial intelligence, and resource management. 
Chameleon supports a bare metal reconfiguration system giving users full control of the software stack including root privileges, kernel customization, and console access. Chameleon adapted OpenStack, a mainstream open source cloud technology, to provide its capabilities. 
The EVL site brings back 8 Haswell nodes retired from <a href="https://www.tacc.utexas.edu/">Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC)</a> with 13 more nodes coming online next month, for a total of 21. The EVL site can be accessed with an existing Chameleon Account, Projects, and Allocations, either by going directly to <a href="https://chi.evl.uic.edu/">https://chi.evl.uic.edu/</a>, the experiment dropdown on <a href="https://chameleoncloud.org">https://chameleoncloud.org</a>, or the dropdown on horizon for any other sites. 
Each node is equipped with 24 cores (48 threads), 128 GB of RAM, 2x 1G network connections, and a 250GB hard drive. Hardware details and availability can be reviewed on the hardware discovery page. 
<a href="https://github.com/ChameleonCloud/chi-in-a-box">https://github.com/ChameleonCloud/chi-in-a-box</a>

EVL Joins Chameleon

On January 25, 2022, EVL faculty member assistant professor Fabio Miranda was interviewed by Univision TV to discuss environmental contamination and the implication to Chicagoland Latino communities.  According to an investigation and recent study by UIC and Miranda &ldquo;the southwest of the city has a large presence of pollutants disproportionately affecting Latino communities.&rdquo; The study explores issues of local government perpetuating environmental racism. Miranda&rsquo;s research focuses on how visual data analytics can help address different problems cities face by integrating data on different resolutions and from different sources.

Interview with Fabio Miranda

EVL Faculty Assistant Professor Fabio Miranda Discussed Environmental Issues Impacting Chicago&rsquo;s Latino Communities

EVL faculty member and computer science assistant professor Fabio Miranda has been researching how visual data analytics can help address different problems cities face by integrating data on different resolutions and from different sources. His most recent collaboration is with the UIC School of Public Health&rsquo;s investigator Michael Cailas. Collectively, Miranda and Cailas have assembled Chicagoland data on pollution levels to create an interactive map that allows residents to find out what sources of pollution are near their schools and homes. Not surprisingly to those living in the highly industrialized southwest side of Chicago, Latino neighborhoods are seemingly hit the hardest. 
Read the full article on <a href="https://blockclubchicago.org/2022/01/25/new-map-shows-pollution-near-your-kids-school-and-confirms-latino-neighborhoods-are-hit-the-hardest/">Block Club Chicago</a>

Environmental Justice Landscape Map

EVL Faculty Assistant Professor Fabio Miranda Collaborates with UIC&rsquo;s School of Public Health to Visualize Pollution

EVL faculty assistant professor Fabio Miranda has teamed up with researchers from UIC&rsquo;s School of Public health studying environmental hazards to develop an interactive online map that illustrates the proximity of environmental hazards such as industrial pollution to Chicagoland neighborhoods. The current research provides a number of new tools and information that expands on earlier groundwork measuring environmental justice issues, including industry proximity to schools, nearby emissions sources and environmental justice impacts by community area. 
A recent <a href="https://mckinleypark.news/news/2493-environmental-justice-issues-inspire-new-pollution-sites-map">McKinley Park News article</a> features this research lead by Michael Cailas from the School of Public Health, entitled &ldquo;Midwest Comprehensive Visualization Dashboards: A New Environmental Justice Tool for Chicago Communities&rdquo;. The MCVD has been created by Joel Flax-Hatch, Fabio Miranda, Apostolis Sambanis, and Michael D. Cailas, with the
participation of Michael Siciliano, Sybil Derrible, Yuan Shao, and Greg Arling. 
<a href="https://univofillinois.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant/nearby/index.html?appid=486f6e438ecf4b048deebc8dafd9f2c1&sliderDistance=1">Link to the MCVD interactive map.</a>

Environmental Justice Issues Inspire New Pollution Sites Map

Assistant professor Nikita Nandish Soni has joined the faculty of computer science at UIC, specializing in human-computer interaction. As affiliated EVL faculty, Dr. Soni will continue her research in designing natural user interactions for multi-touch spherical displays that support collaboration and learning. We look forward to her contributing to the design, development and evaluation of intelligent user-interface technologies, especially for children and families. 
<a href="https://cs.uic.edu/news-stories/cs-department-adds-a-new-human-computer-interaction-researcher/">Read the full article in the COE/CS News.</a>

Events - 2022

UIC CS News Features “Larger than life: CS faculty participate in public art project in downtown Chicago”

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

Interactive Spherical Display Open House at EVL

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

The Architect’s Newspaper and The Design Observer Feature A Century of Chicago Design History

November 18th Opening of “Chicago Design Through the Decades” on the Art on theMART

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