staff | Hua Guo | (TA) Johannes Novotny |
---|---|---|
reach us | huag@cs.brown.edu |
novotny@cs.brown.edu |
office | Brown CIT 553 | Brown CIT 509 |
Class Meetings
The class will meet:
- in Room 316, CIT building
- on Tuesday and Thursday from 1:00pm to 2:20pm,
- for the first time on Thursday, September 8, 1:00pm at CIT Room 316.
Course Description
In this class we will learn about solving scientific problems using computer graphics and visualization. We will learn how to do interdisciplinary scientific visualization research, from soup to nuts, in one semester. Projects will involve the solution of scientific problems using computer graphics, modeling, and visualization. Working in small groups, students will identify scientific problems, propose solutions involving computational modeling and visualization, evaluate the proposals, design and implement the solutions, apply them to the problems, evaluate their success, and report on results. Example projects might include interactive software systems, immersive virtual reality cave applications, quantitative analysis tools, or new applications of existing visualizations methods. For this year in particular, the focus will be on applications in the new virtual reality cave. Aims
At the end of CSCI1951-J, students will have experience with:
- carrying out an interdisciplinary research project from concept to artifact;
- effectively communicating with collaborators in other disciplines;
- expressing their scientific ideas more clearly both in writing and orally;
- current visualization literature, open problems, and promising research directions.
Objectives and Course Content Overview
The course will be organized around “funding” and implementing a small interdisciplinary research project. As references, we’ll study some funded grant proposals produced by faculty at Brown and elsewhere. We’ll start with a program announcement (PA) or request for proposal (RFP), read the proposal, see the reviews that it received, and look at the work that has resulted from the grant. Some of the proposal authors will guest lecture to describe their proposals, work, and philosophy.
Each member of class will create a short proposal on which they are the principal investigator. The proposals should be multi-disciplinary - so each should have 2 or 3 authors, one of them the principal investigator. The class will review the proposals, emulating the NSF review process, and recommend some of the proposals for “funding.” The “funded” proposals will then be implemented in small groups. Each group will finish with an extended abstract and presentation describing their accomplishments.
Class time will be used for project related tasks, discussion of literature and open problems, lectures on research directions and tools, and guest lectures from application areas.
During the semester we will also cover several topics motivated by the project topics. Examples might include modeling of medical images, using user studies for evaluation of interfaces or visualization methods, or virtual reality visualizations. Each student will also be responsible for presenting 2-3 papers on topics related to their project.
See the calendar for more details.
Assessment
The course grade is weighted as follows:
- 25% written research proposal
- 20% 3-4 presentations in class
- 30% final research extended abstract and presentation
- 15% homeworks
- 10% class participation
A late handin will cost 1/3 of a letter grade off the final course grade for each calendar day it is late. Each student gets five free late days before penalties accrue.
Readings
Readings will be copied and handed out or made available via the course calendar web page.