All handins are due by 10AM the same
day of class to allow for review before class.
Please get your reviews and readings done in time. The whole point of
the class is to get different points of view for interdisciplinary
research problems. It'll make classes much more fun if everybody
participates and has an opinion. It's not fair to others to make them
always carry the weight of leading the discussions. Prepare for a
dynamic and open discussion in almost every class.
Handins are to be made online (logged into a machine in the CS
department) to a directory on the CS department machines. You must have
a CS account to do this, so please make sure that you get an account
the
first day of classes. Talk to David and sign up for an account the
first
day of classes, Tuesday 9/6 at 1:20pm. You can also email Daniel
Acevedo
(daf@cs.brown.edu) or David Laidlaw (dhl@cs.brown.edu), but you will
need to pass by David's office to get the temporary password for your
account. They cannot be emailed outside CS.
When you are logged in to a CS machine (in the Sun lab, for
instance, or over the network), you can deliver assignments to:
/pro/web/web/courses/cs237/assignments/DATE/LOGIN.EXT
where you replace DATE with the due date (e.g., 9-7), LOGIN with
your CS login (e.g., dhl), and EXT with the type of file (e.g., txt).
If
multiple handins are due the same day, please number them (e.g.,
dhl1.txt, dhl2.txt). For handins the first week, those without CS
account can e-mail their handins to daf@cs.brown.edu and he will put
them into the appropriate assignments directory.
IMPORTANT NOTE!!! Some of the
readings needed for the class are PASSWORD PROTECTED due to copyright
issues. Make sure to contact Daniel Acevedo (daf@cs.brown.edu) or David
Laidlaw (dhl@cs.brown.edu) to get the username and password THE FIRST
DAY OF CLASS.
Visit the first 2 links in the links page
if you are not familiar with UNIX.
Almost all of the readings we will do are online to reduce copying
effort and costs, and to keep color imagery intact. Printing them for
your own use is fine. Please look at the color images in color, though!
Some of the files are huge (40-50 Mb). You will not be able to get them
over a phone line.
Please respect the grant proposals you will be reading. They are
not published documents and should not be circulated outside of class.
Please make sure that you destroy any copies of those documents when
you
are finished with them for class.
Due on Thu 9/8/05
If you don't already have one, make sure you are signed up to get a CS
computer account! Contact daf@cs.brown.edu.
Hand in (by 10AM Thursday!):
personal background
Read, with an eye toward your essay (see below):
- Brooks
Toolsmith II paper . This describes how to do computer science,
which is the "home" discipline for scientific visualization.
- The landmark
Visualization in Scientific Computing (McCormick, DeFanti, Brown)
set the stage for scientific visualization and its funding back in
1987.
Read the executive summary and sections I-III. Skim through appendix A
and read the sections that are most interesting to you. Read section
A.3. Skim through appendices B and C so you have some idea of what's in
them when you need the information there later.
- Johnson's Top
Scientific Visualization Research Problems, Chen's Top 10
Unsolved Information Visualization Problems and Hanrahan's Teaching
Visualization.
- (Suggested reading.Not required)
Part of a lobbying
effort for national funding, the Data
and Visualization Corridors gives a 1999 perspective on what was
limiting progress in high-end visualization. Read the executive summary
and quickly flip through the rest of the document to get a feel for
more
research topics.
- (Suggested reading.Not required)
Bill Hibbard's vis viewpoints column The
Top Five Problems that Motivated My Work.
- (Suggested reading.Not required)
Another vis viewpoints column by David Duke et al. Do You
See What I Mean?.
- (Suggested reading. Not required)
Research and Development Agenda for visual analytics developed to
define the directions and priorities for future research and
development programs focused on visual analytics tools. Illuminating the Path.
Hand in by 10AM Thursday:
an essay,
250-750 words,
describing three visualization research topics of interest to you. Base
the topics on the readings. For each topic, explain your motivation and
how it fits in (or doesn't) with all of the readings.
Due on Tue 9/13/05
These readings will give you a feel for what goes into a research grant
proposal.
The
NSF
Grant Proposal Guide (2004) describes how to write a grant
proposal.
While some of the instructions are specific to NSF, much of the
document
gives good advice on how to write any proposal.
- Skim: wh
- Read: I.B, II.C.2.a-f, II.C.2.h-k, III(intro), III.A, III.E-F,
VI.G
Here's another shorter document from NSF you must read.
It gives some
guidelines
for proposal writing.
Read a Program Announcement. Typically, NSF accepts
both unsolicited grant applications (for whatever a proposer thinks is
worth doing) and solicited applications. Applications are solicited via
a Program Announcement (PA), sometimes called a Request for Proposals
(RFP). The
NSF
Information Technology Research (ITR) Program Announcement gives
one example of what they are looking for.
Read proposal
Understanding
Unsteady Bioflows through Simulation, Modeling, Visualization, Art, and
Psychology (Laidlaw,
Swartz, Lauder, Karniadakis, Richardson, Breuer, Tarr, Warren, Drury).
This is a proposal in
response to the ITR solicitation. It was successful and was partially
funded
September 2004. You don't need to understand all, but try to get the
big picture as an example of a multi-disciplinary research project.
Hand in by 10AM Tuesday:
your review
Read
NSF
reviews of the proposal (after you write yours) and add any new
discussion questions to your review.
Hand in a
list of four
possible collaborators from
class or from other disciplines for your class project. Read the
RFP for
class projects to understand more
about the criteria for judging a project idea. Possible collaborators
can be from the
class,
the
list of project ideas
suggested
by various researchers around campus, and any personal contacts you
have. Describe the discipline of each possible collaborator and how it
is distinct from your area. At least two must be contributors to the
list of project ideas or established researchers.
You will need to meet with at least three of the four possible
collaborators and report on those meetings on 9/20. These meetings will
help you develop the interdisciplinary par project. Get
started scheduling these meetings and look at what you'll need to hand
in as a
report.
Continue interviewing possible
collaborators.
Due on Tue 9/20/05
Hand in
interview reports.
Hand in at least three possible proposal titles. For
each, include a brief description, a list of participants, and your
evaluation of the proposal you imagine. Use the
RFP to guide your project ideas and to self-evaluate them.
Past proposals for the class can be found in the
Ideas page. Two good examples
are Danah Beard's 1999
Analysis
of Depth Cues project (includes presentation) and Mike Kirby's 2000
Optimal
Vector Placement User Study project.
Due on Thu 9/22/05
NIH
guide
to proposals -- read the interesting and relevant parts.
Review and discuss
NIH grant
DTI+MRI-based Tools for Analyzing White
Matter Variation
(Laidlaw, Ahrens, Allman, Bastin)
Read
NIH
reviews of the proposal (after you write yours) and add any new
discussion questions to your review.
Due on Tue 9/27/05
Hand in
results from literature
search. You should this search on the project you are most
seriously considering doing out of all the ideas you have. Look
here
for links to research publications.
Review the table of contents for the upcoming book
Visualization
Handbook. For the class, try to see if the topics in the book
suggest some extra readings related to your project. Are there any new
ideas in there for a different project? The authors are in there also,
and these are all the big guys in sci-viz, so google for their web
pages
and see what other stuff they are working on.
THE BOOK IS ON RESERVE AT THE SCIENCES LIBRARY! Read through it for
interesting articles!
You will schedule your meeting with the rethoric fellow
to go over your proposal presentation. Please bring your calendars to
class !!
Continue developing your project proposal, filling in
any weaknesses, fleshing out the related work section, etc.
Be prepared to briefly describe the project idea you
are most seriously considering and any issues, concerns, problems, etc.
that we can discuss in class.
Due on Thu 9/29/05
Quantitative
inverse electrocardiography. This proposal is more than 15 years
old, so the work is not current. It does show an excellent example of a
successful non-clinical NIH grant proposal. Non-clinical work is often
quite difficult to get funded by NIH. Note the structure of the
proposal, with well-formulated hypotheses to test.
- Skim: whole thing (0:20)
- Read: four sections starting with Specific Aims (1:20)
- Deliver by 10AM Thursday: (0:40).
Read
partial list of
resulting papers
Read R.S. MacLeod, C.R. Johnson, and M.A. Matheson.
Visualization
of bioelectric fields. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, pp.
10-12, July 1993.
Read this PowerPoint presentation about the
NIH
proposal review process.
Daniel will explain how to make your reading lists in
VISWEB. Take a look at
this document
and print it out before class. You don't need to do anything with
it before the class, just read over it and bring it to class.
Due on Tu 10/04/05
Preliminary proposals due in paper. Proposal presentations in class.
Present your Visweb reading list with your related publications.
Due on Th 10/06/05
Proposal presentations in class (cont.)
Due on Tu 10/20/05
Submit a list of 6 papers from the
"cs237
interesting papers" list. From that list we'll choose two papers
for you to present in class in the following weeks. For each paper
indicate:
- Title
- Preference value (1-6 among your six papers. Don't repeat values!)
- Reason why you want to present it.