WHAT'S NEW?

   (March 9, 20112)

Here's a link to the paper Alyssa Goodman and I wrote on  integrating human- and computer-based approaches  for extracting features in visualization, graphics and imaging data.  The next step will be to strengthen this framework by exercising it with scenarios from a number of different fields. 

   (January 27, 2012)

The Human Vision and Electronic Imaging Conference, January 23- 26, 2012 was very exciting.   Our keynote speakers were Marc Levoy (Stanford) on computational photography, John McCann (McCann Imaging) on color constancy and high dynamic range imaging and Larry Maloney (NYU) on the perception of materials.  Carol O'Sullivan (Trinity College) gave the banquet talk on human motion perception and computer animation, and we enjoyed Art and Perception day, which culminated in a visit to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.   There were special session on perceptual and cognitive approaches to computational photography, perceiving materials, medical imaging, stereo imaging, image quality, and brain plasticity.  I presented a paper with Alyssa Goodman (Harvard) on a framework for integrating human- and machine-based approaches in exploratory image and data analysis, and taught a short course on Perception and Cognition for Emerging Imaging Technologies. 

   (January 6, 2012)

   (October 9, 2011)

Just out! - the advance program for the Human Vision and Electronic Imaging Conference, January 23- 26, 2012.  This year there are special sessions on perceptual and cognitive issues in Representing Materials, Computational Photography, Medical Imaging, Art, Stereo Imaging, and Image Quality, plus, tutorials on January 22nd.

   (August 15, 2011)

The IEEE Visualization conference is coming up.   Here's the outline for the tutorial I'll be presenting on Perception and Cognition for Visualization, Visual Data Analysis and Computer Graphics.   I'll be posting the charts in October.   

   (April 26, 2011)

The 2012 Conference on Human Vision and Electronic Imaging call for papers is now available.  The conference will be held at the San Francisco Hyatt airport hotel, January 22-26.  This year, we are planning special sessions on 1) perceiving material properties, 2) attention and visual search, 3) artistic rendering, 4) semiotics of perception, 5) object recognition, 6) computational photography, 7) auditory/visual integration, and 8) perceptual image quality.  Hope you can join us for another year of multidisciplinary exploration at the frontier of human perception and electronic media. 

   (March 15, 2011)

Although scientific software often provides complementary functions, it is difficult to create an application that supports interactive exploration across applications.  To address this problem, Naim Matasci and I have just published a paper on an architecture for sharing data between components, which we call  the Metadata mapper.  In this system, the user can identify metadata in one component (e.g., a region of interest) and corresponding regions can be highlighted in another.  Rules guide the data mapping, and the choices the user makes are constrained by the capabilities of the target component and guidance on human perception and cognition.  For example, the analyst may select a geographic region, in one application, and have all the species living in that region highlighted on a phylogenetic tree.  If the tree component can support the representation of continuous variables, then the user may select a color map to represent the number of represented species in a particular branch (clade) of the tree.  Which colormap are offered to the analyst depend on the data type and principles of magnitude and color perception.  Although this work was done in the context of bioinformatics data analysis, the principles are generalizable to any component architecture.

The 2011 Conference on Human Vision and Electronic Imaging was fabulous.  I especially enjoyed the keynotes: Georges Grinstein on visualization and visual analysis opportunities, Anton Koning on 3-D medical environments, Jan Koenderink on the visual "priors" we bring to any visual experience, and Nao Tsuchiya on new research in attention and consciousness.  We'll be posting their presentations on the HVEI website.  I really enjoyed our special sessions Attention, and Perceptual challenges for bioinformatics data visualization and the joint sessions on Stereo and Image Quality brought several communities together.  I'll be posting the charts from my short course soon.  And, thanks again to iPlant and RIT for sponsoring social events for us.  

   (December 9, 2010)

I participated in the National Academies Keck Futures Initiative (NAKFI) Future of Imaging Conference in Irvine, sponsored by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine, November 16-19.  This was a fabulous multi-disciplinary conference, focused on defining research challenges in this emerging area.  The main activities were poster presentations and workshops.  I presented a poster called "Perception, Cognition and Semantics in Imaging".  My workshop team developed a framework for integrating human and machine intelligence for representing and comparing features in visual representations, combining approaches from human vision and cognition, machine vision, computer vision, and artificial intelligence.   More details can be shared after the report is filed!

   (October 23, 2010) 

IEEE Visualization Conference  October 21-28, 2010.  I served on the Theory of Visualization Panel, where my contribution focused perceptual guidance for mapping data onto visual representations and interactive tools for finding features in the data.  Georges Grinstein and I hosted the VisLies session on Tuesday night, a riotous exploration of the ways in which data can be misrepresented, contorted, or tortured through visualization.

   (September 24, 2010)  

Here is the  Advance Program for the SPIE/IS&T  Conference on Human Vision and Electronic Imaging (HVEI), which I chair with Thrasos Pappas.  HVEI will be held at the San Francisco Airport Hyatt, January 24-27, 2011.  Some highlights of this year's program include:

• Special Sessions on:  Perceptual and Cognitive Issues in Visualizing Bioinformatics data and Attention and Visual Search
• Joint Sessions with other Conferences on:  Stereo and Attention and Image Quality.
• Keynote speakers:  Georges Grinstein, Jan Koenderink, Anton Koning, and Kristof Koch. 
  
• Banquet Speaker:  Mark Changizi.

   (July 28, 2010)

The ViVA visualization and visual analysis software package that my group developed at IBM Research is now available for download on Source Forge:  https://sourceforge.net/projects/iplant-viva/

   (January, 2010) 

I'm working for the University of Texas, Austin's Center for Advanced Computing (TACC) on an NSF grant called iPlant.  My contribution is at the interface between plant and computer science, providing discovery tools and methods that will enable new scientific insights.  I'm participating in two working groups, one on Visualization and Visual Analysis for genome to phenome (G2P) data analysis and one on visualizing a 500,000 species tree of life.  I'm eager to hear about relevant work you are doing in these areas.