Tours at UC San Diego - Wednesday, Feb. 17
1. Visualizing Science: California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) at UCSD.
- Demonstrations of advanced scientific visualization technologies: Calit2 Director Larry Smarr, the 360-degree StarCAVE virtual reality environment, the 105-million-pixel Varrier autostereoscopic 3D system (3D viewing without 3D glasses), NexCAVE prototype of a potential home-based surround-3D system, and the HIPerSpace system (287 million pixels) and HIPerTouch surface-display system.
- Visual Analytics 2.0 for Science: Prof. Falko Kuester, Calit2 Professor of Visualization and Virtual Reality, will talk about the revolution in collaborative analytical tools that are transforming research in a wide range of data-intensive fields.
- Project GreenLight: Prof. Tom DeFanti, Calit2 Research Scientist and Principal Investigator on the $2.6 million NSF GreenLight grant, will talk about UCSD's effort to build a controlled environment to test and ultimately improve the energy efficiency of IT, which has a similar carbon "footprint" as the airline industry.
- Computational Astrophysics Data Center (CADAC): Prof. Mike Norman, Interim Director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center, will talk about CADAC, a free service for the astrophysics community that hosts a public data collection of large astrophysical simulations and provides data-analysis resources to researchers worldwide.
2. The Human Brain Library: The Brain Observatory - This Tour is Full
- The Brain Observatory is dedicated to modeling the structural design of the human brain at multiple levels of resolution and to elucidating the processes that underlie neuro-cognitive disease. Director Jacopo Annese and colleagues employ neuroimaging and visualization techniques to build a virtual neuroanatomical library that aims at representing the wide range of human brain phenotypes. The Human Brain Library will be freely accessible via the web and will include the brains of famed neurological cases such as the amnesiac patient "H.M."
3. Chemical Fingerprints in the Atmosphere, Physics and Art: Division of Physical Sciences
- Newest Hazards from Air Pollution: Identifying particulates from wildfires and ship smoke– Prather lab tour (http://atofms.ucsd.edu/ ) Chemistry Professor Kimberly Prather has developed real-time particulate analyzers from which she and her colleagues have found new and surprising hazards within the supposedly pristine California coastal air we breathe. (see: http://luminance.ucsd.edu/AlteredAtmosphere/ )
- Chemical Fingerprinting of the Solar System and Earth's Atmosphere – Thiemens lab.
Chemistry Professor Mark Thiemens, Dean of the Division of Physical Sciences, has developed a technique that allows him to probe meteorites and other space and terrestrial rocks for information about our ancient atmosphere and those of other planets, such as Mars. He's also been involved in monitoring ship smoke off the California coast. - Physics and Art - A Gateway to the Sciences – Jose Onuchic, co-director Center for Theoretical Biological Physics
Physics Professor Jose Onuchic and his colleagues at the Center for Theoretical Biological Physics are applying the mathematical tools of physics to understand the complex behavior of biological systems, such as why bacterial colonies grow in a way that often make them look like modern art paintings.
4. Robotics and the Future of Climate Research: Scripps Institution of Oceanography
V. Ramanathan and Russ Davis have made possible large-scale observations that had been prohibitively expensive before. The world-renowned climate science pioneers will show visitors some of the autonomous devices that have transformed how nature is observed.- Russ Davis' design breakthroughs led to Argo, a global network of ocean floats that provide simultaneous data collection worldwide. Now his team is working on a new generation of floats.
- V. Ramanathan has flown multiple unmanned aircraft in formation through clouds to create multi-dimensional profiles of atmospheric phenomena.