Topic

Assignment

-------First Class: Thu 9/6, 1pm---------

Introduction

• Goals
• Organization
• Schedule
• Definition of Visualization

• Sign up for a CS account

Tue 9/11

• Open problems in Visualization
• What makes a good problem?

If you don't already have one, make sure you are signed up to get a CS computer account! Contact jr@cs.brown.edu.

Read before class, with an eye toward your essay:

• required:

  • Toolsmith II paper (Brooks)  -  this describes how to do computer science, which is the "home" discipline for scientific visualization.
  • Top Scientific Visualization Research Problems (Johnson)
• one of the following:
  • 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.
  • Computational Science: Ensuring America’s Competitiveness  (President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee), also  http://www.sci.utah.edu/cra-nih06/ and http://www.nitrd.gov/pubs/
  • Top 10 Unsolved Information Visualization Problems (Chen)
• suggested reading (not required):
  • (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.

Deliverables (by 10AM Tue):

•  personal background
•  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.

Thu 9/13

• Review and discuss NSF ITR proposal:
  Understanding Unsteady Bioflows through Simulation, Modeling, Visualization, Art, and Psychology (Laidlaw, Swartz, Lauder, Karniadakis, Richardson, Breuer, Tarr, Warren, Drury)
• Evaluating project possibilities

These readings will give you a feel for what goes into a research grant proposal:

• 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: whole thing
  • Read: I.B, II.C.2.a-f, II.C.2.h-k, III(intro), III.A, III.E-F, VI.G

• Guidelines for proposal writing

• NSF Information Technology Research (ITR) 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). This is 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.
• Read the RFP for class projects
• Consult list of project ideas
  
  

Deliverables:

• Hand in by 10AM Thursday your own review for the ITR grant.
• 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.

Collaborator's list - 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.

back to top

Tue 9/18

• Review of NSF CAREER proposal
  Shape Capture and Modeling for Wrist Dynamics and Ancient Pottery Analysis using Manifold Surfaces and Signed-Distance Volume Images (Laidlaw)
• Evaluating project possibilities

• NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program Announcement
• Shape Capture and Modeling for Wrist Dynamics and Ancient Pottery Analysis using Manifold Surfaces and Signed-Distance Volume Images (Laidlaw) -this is a second example of an interdisciplinary visualization proposal. The application areas are quite different and the proposal is more focused on visualization. Skim the whole proposal, then read the Project Summary and Project Description.  
• Read NSF reviews of the proposal (write your own reviews first! see the deliverables section)

Deliverables:

• CAREER grant review   Write: your own review. Do the review before reading the NSF reviews, and then answer the subsequent questions after the other readings.
• Continue interviewing collaborators
• Read NSF reviews of the proposal (after you write yours) and add any new discussion questions to your review.
• Read: annual status report to NSF. Once again, this gives a feel for what NSF is interested in.
• Continue interviewing possible collaborators.

NEW: Jadrian's compiled collaborators list.

Thu 9/20

• Discuss project ideas

Deliverables:

• Read Request For Proposals
• Consult previous proposals in the Ideas page
• Interview reports
• 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.

back to top

Tue 9/25

• Review and discuss NIH proposal
  DTI+MRI-based Tools for Analyzing White Matter Variation (Laidlaw, Ahrens, Allman, Bastin)

• Read NIH guide to proposals - read the interesting and relevant parts

Option 1:

• Read grant DTI+MRI-based Tools for Analyzing White Matter Variation (Laidlaw, Ahrens, Allman, Bastin)
• Read NIH reviews of the proposal
• Read the intro section of the revised grant application A1 to see the changes that have been made in response to the review

Option 2:

• Read the first revision A1.pdf of the grant  DTI+MRI-based Tools for Analyzing White Matter Variation (Laidlaw, Ahrens, Allman, Bastin)
• Read NIH reviews of the first revision
• Read the second revision A2 to see the changes made in response to the review

Deliverables:

• NIH grant review (do the review for the first application you read: for option 1 review the first grant application, for option 2 review the first revision - A1)
• Read NIH reviews of the proposal (after you write yours) and add any new discussion questions to your review.

Thu 9/27

• Taxonomy of visualization methods and problems

• Read Visualization Handbook.'s table of contents. 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!

Deliverables:

• Hand in results from literature search. You should do 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.
• In class, you will schedule a meeting with the rhetoric 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.

back to top

Tue 10/2

• Review and discuss NIH proposal
  Quantitative Inverse Electrocardiography (Johnson).
• Meet with Chris Johnson via phone conference

• Read Quantitative inverse electrocardiography (Johnson) - 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 the whole thing  and read the four sections starting with Specific Aims.
• Read partial list of resulting papers
• Read Visualization of bioelectric fields, MacLeod et al.
• Read this PowerPoint presentation about the NIH proposal review process

Deliverables:

• Your review of Johnson's NIH grant
• Radu 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.
• IMPORTANT: bring to class three questions for Chris Johnson.

Thu 10/4

• Proposal presentations

• Preliminary proposal due; writen part + presentation in class (Word is the preferable format since we can comment directly on the documents; if you are using LaTex please convert to pdf before sumbitting. Also put the ppt in the submission folder and make it readable to others - we will log into one account and run all the presentions from there)
• Visweb reading list

Topic

Assignment

back to top

Tue 10/9

• Proposal presentations

• Read proposals from the /assignments/10-04/ directory

Thu 10/11

• Understanding Imaging Data

Deliverables:

• Read proposals from the /assignments/10-04/ directory
• Your proposal reviews

back to top

Tue 10/16

• User studies
• Project Schedules

Thu 10/18

• Data modeling

Deliverables:

• Final proposals DUE NOON WEDNESDAY!
• Final proposals' reviews

back to top

Tue 10/23

• Study section (evaluate, score, "fund'' proposals)

Deliverables:

• 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.

Thu 10/25

• Study section (evaluate, score, "fund'' proposals)

 Deliverables for Friday - 10/26 - noon!!!!  (please put them in the folder 10-26)

• how do you feel about working solo? Possible answers are:

  • I'd prefer working solo to having a Co-PI

  • I'd be willing to work solo

  • I'd do it, but with some misgivings

  • I'd prefer to have two people

  • I'd rather eat paste than do my proposal alone

• how would the scope of your project change with a single person:

  • I still would do everything I proposed

  • I could still make a significant impact and have solid results (enumerate)

  • I'm not sure it would be possible to finish anything significant

• summary statements.  Label them "[proposer]_by_[proposee].txt" (don't be late)

back to top

Tue 10/30

• No Class!  VIS Conference in Sacramento

Tue 11/1

• No Class!  VIS Conference in Sacramento

Topic

Sections

Assignment

back to top

Tue 11/6

• Vis Conference review

Thu 11/8

• Matt: Martin Wattenberg and Danyel Fisher. A Model of Multi-Scale Perceptual Organization in Information Graphics. In Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization, October 2003. (pdf)
• Laura: Aditi Majumder and Sandy Irani. Contrast enhancement of images using human contrast sensitivity . In Proceedings of the 3rd symposium on Applied perception in graphics and visualization, pages 69-76, Boston, MA, July 2006. (pdf)

Non-presenters hand in 3 discussion points for each of the papers being presented

back to top

Tue 11/13

• Ryan: C.R. Johnson and A.R. Sanderson. A Next Step: Visualizing Errors and Uncertainty. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 23(5):6-10, September/October 2003. (pdf)
• Andrew: Russell Beale. Slanty Design. ACM Communications, 50(1):21-24, January 2007. (pdf)

Present your own personal views on the paper depending on the goals you want to achieve. Please bring your comments printed in large format to class. We will put them up and discuss about them.

Tue 11/15

• Project progress. Questions, problems

back to top

Tue 11/20

• Ahmad: J. Edward Swan II, Joseph L. Gabbard, Deborah Hix, Robert S. Schulman, and Keun Pyo Kim. A Comparative Study of User Performance in a Map-Based Virtual Environment. In Proceedings of IEEE Virtual Reality 2003, pages 259-266, 2003. (pdf)
• Scott: Dena Eber and Rosalee Wolfe. Teaching Computer Graphics Visual Literacy to Art and Computer Science Students. Computer Graphics, pages 24-26, February 2000. (pdf)
•  

Read both the papers and do a grant-style review for one of them. Use your own criteria or the ones we discussed in class. The review should be about a page of content, printed on 4 pages.

Thu 11/22

No class,
Thanksgiving!

No class,
Thanksgiving!

back to top

Tue 11/27

• Project progress. Questions, problems.

Thu 11/29

• Brandon: Chris Harding, Ioannis A.Kakadiaris, John F.Casey, and R.Bowen Loftin. A Multi-Sensory System for the investigation of Geoscientific Data. Computers and Graphics, 26:259-269, 2002. (pdf)
• Jadrian: Purvi Saraiya, Chris North, and Karen Duca. An Insight-based Methodology for Evaluating Bioinformatics Visualizations. In IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 11(4):443-456, July/August 2005. (pdf)
•  

Read both the papers and do a grant-style review for one of them. Use your own criteria or the ones we discussed in class. The review should be about a page of content, printed on 4 pages.

Topic

Assignment

back to top

Tue 12/4

• Class Review Forms to be filled out

• Discussion of last weeks project plans

• Schedule final presentation and Shiyin meetings

PROJECT REPORTS:
Bring your schedules for the final 2 weeks.
Shiyin will be in class to schedule 2 meetings per group. See the Project Assignment details for more info.

Thu 12/6

• Trevor: Joe M. Kniss, Robert Van Uitert, Abraham Stephens, Guo-Shi Li,Tolgo Tasdizen, and Charles Hansen. Statistically Quantitative Volume Visualization. (pdf)
• Ed: Lawrence Bragg. The Art of Talking about Science. Science, 154(3757):1613-1616, December 1966. (pdf)
• Review project abstracts

 Bring your preliminary project abstracts to class.

Read both the papers and do a grant-style review for one of them. Use your own criteria or the ones we discussed in class. The review should be about a page of content, printed on 4 pages.

back to top

Thu 12/13  9am

Final Project Presentations

back to top