Insight Through Images: Visualization and Collaboration Technologies for Exploring Big Data

Today, most professions rely on computers to generate, capture, filter, analyze, and visualize data. These troves of data are invaluable to scientists as they explore the raw information and evidence needed for new insights and discovery; however, making those insights is an ever more complicated task, as the scale and complexity of data continue to grow at unprecedented rates. This big data problem requires an advanced cyber infrastructure that includes big displays connected to big computational resources via big networks. The Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago specializes in the design and development of high-performance visualization, virtual-reality and collaboration display systems, and applications utilizing advanced networking. This presentation describes EVL’s CAVE2 Hybrid Reality Environment and SAGE2 Scalable Amplified Group Environment and gives examples of how they are enhancing immersive simulation exploration and information-rich analysis and enabling scientific discovery through interdisciplinary collaboration.  

About Maxine

Maxine Brown is the director of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), responsible for fundraising, outreach, documentation, and promotion of its research activities. Her research interests include computer graphics, scientific visualization, collaboration, human-computer interfaces, and high-performance computing and international network infrastructure. Maxine has been active in the ACM SIGGRAPH organization and in SIGGRAPH and ACM/IEEE Supercomputing conferences; she is currently co-chair for IEEE Visualization 2015, to be held in Chicago in October 2015. In recognition of her services to UIC and the community at large, Maxine is a recipient of the 1990 UIC Chancellor’s Academic Professional Excellence (CAPE) award, the 2001 UIC Merit Award, and the 1998 ACM SIGGRAPH Outstanding Service Award. In 2009, Chicago’s award-winning multimedia public affairs series “Chicago Matters: Beyond Burnham” designated Maxine as one of 15 global visionaries for her role in co-developing the StarLight national/international communications exchange, located in downtown Chicago.