First Class: Thu 9/6

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! In addition, please email Steve a small photo of yourself to include on the website (steveg@cs).

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 CRA NIH Workshop Recommendations and http://www.nitrd.gov/pubs/
  • Top 10 Unsolved Information Visualization Problems (Chen)

• 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.
  • Bill Hibbard's vis viewpoints column The Top Five Problems that Motivated My Work.
  • Another vis viewpoints column by David Duke et al. Do You See What I Mean?.
  • 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.

• 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. Hand in as your_login2.txt as described for personal background handin.

Thur 9/13

• Review and discuss NSF ITR proposal:
  Understanding Unsteady Bioflows through Simulation, Modeling, Visualization, Art, and Psychology (Laidlaw et al.)
• 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 the list of project ideas

Deliverables (10am):

• Mandatory: Join the cs237 Google Group. Make sure your settings allow you to receive messages by email. This will be the primary mailing list for the class!
• 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. The RFP for class projects will help you 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. Coordinate with other class members for interviewing to avoid duplicating collaborator effort.

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.
• After writing your own review (see Deliverables), read NSF reviews of the proposal, then add any new discussion questions to your review.

• Write your own review (using this form) of the CAREER proposal. Do the review before reading the NSF reviews.
• Read annual status report to NSF. Once again, this gives a feel for what NSF is interested in.
• Continue interviewing possible collaborators.

Thur 9/20

• Discuss project ideas

• 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.

Tue 9/25

• Review and discuss NIH proposal
  DTI+MRI-based Tools for Analyzing White Matter Variation (Laidlaw et al.)

• 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.pdf 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.pdf to see the changes made in response to the review

• 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.

Thur 9/27

• 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

• Your review of Johnson's NIH grant
• Important: Bring to class three questions for Chris Johnson.

Tue 10/02

• Visualization Methods and Problems

• Read Visualization Handbook's table of contents. For the class, see if the topics in the book suggest some readings related to your project. Are there any new ideas in there for a different project? Google for the authors' web pages and see what other stuff they are working on. If you're interested in reading more, the book is available at the Sciences Library (SciLi).

• 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.
• 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.

Thur 10/04

• Proposal presentations

• Preliminary proposal due; written part + presentation in class. Word is the preferable format since we can comment directly on the documents; if you are using LaTeX please typeset a pdf before submitting. Also put the presentation (PowerPoint or pdf) in the submission folder and make sure it is readable to others. We will log into one account and run all the presentions from there.
• Compiled Preliminary Proposals

Tue 10/09

• Proposal presentations

• Read proposals from the /assignments/10-04/ directory
• Read and respond (required) to the Final Presentations survey that was emailed to the class

Thur 10/11

• Understanding Imaging Data

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

• Your proposal reviews

Tue 10/23

• Data Modeling
• Project Schedules

• Final proposals due by noon on Tuesday
  Review Assignments can be found on this Google Doc!

Thur 10/25

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

• Review the final proposals assigned to you. Use a separate form for each review you write, and name the file proposer_by_reviewer.txt when you hand it in. For instance, if Steve reviews David's proposal, he should hand in a file called dhl_by_steveg.txt. Reviewer assignments can be found on this Google Doc.
• Hand in your response to the quick questions in this form as yourLogin.txt.

Thur 11/01

• User studies: goals and methods

• "Empirical Studies in Information Visualization Evaluation: Seven Scenarios", Lam et al., IEEE TVCG 18, 9 (September 2012).
  
  Think about how this reading relates to the evaluation in your proposal: What is your evaluation goal? What challenges does your method present and what assumptions will you make?

• Hand in a summary statement on your "Primary" proposal. Try to capture all the discussion points for the proposal. The length should be however long it takes for you to adequately summarize the discussion. Name the file proposer_by_yourLogin.txt.

Tue 11/06

• Finding related work

In class, we will split into groups and find related work for the "funded" projects.

New! Google Doc with in-class findings here (must belong to cs237-12 Google Group to access)

Thur 11/08

• Guest: Ryan Boller

• Read Ryan's proposal (pages 51-60);
• his final hand-in (pages 8-9);
• and a resulting publication from this project

• Submit three (3) questions to ask Ryan during class

Tue 11/13

• Reading VisWeek papers

In class, we will quickly read and evaluate recent visualization papers from the 2012 IEEE visualization conferences.

VisWeek papers mega-sheet for class activity (must belong to cs237-12 Google Group to access)

Thur 11/15

• Reading (and re-writing) papers
• Project progress update: questions, problems

In class, we will split into groups and re-write the abstracts of papers to improve them. Afterward, project groups will have time to update the class about progress.

VisWeek papers mega-sheet for class activity (must belong to cs237-12 Google Group to access)

Tue 11/20

• Visualization methods and tools

In class, we will review visualization methods provided by popular toolkits and systems. We will have an in-class demo by Ph.D student Hua Guo (http://www.cs.brown.edu/people/huag) of a visualization built with the d3.js library. These tools might be of use to you for your projects, or for future visualization development.

Slides from class are available here

Tue 11/27

• Budgeting for research
• Project progress update: questions, problems

Thur 11/29

• Discussion of final plans for projects

• Bring in your schedules for the final 2 weeks. Project groups will have time to update the class about progress.
• Start your presentations. Next week, we'll have a dress rehearsal for final presentations. Look ahead in the calendar for more info about our expectations.

Tue 12/04

• Class review forms to be filled out
• Research abstracts: what to report and how much?

In class, we will fill out course review forms and look at examples of 2-page research abstracts.

• Skim the following three two-page abstracts from the Best Posters from the recent 2012 IEEE VisWeek conferences (SciVis, InfoVis, VAST). Don't spend more than 5 minutes per abstract!:
  • "Exploring Flow Fields Using Fractal Analysis of Field Lines", Chaudhuri et al., IEEE SciVis '12 Best Poster
  • "Towards Visual Sedimentation", Huron et al., IEEE InfoVis '12 Best Poster
  • "Exploring the Impact of Emotion on Visual Judgement", Harrison et al., IEEE VAST '12 Best Poster

  Take note of what makes these abstracts stand out. Be prepared to discuss in class: 1) which you liked best and why, and 2) how the authors communicated their contributions in these short abstracts.

Thur 12/06

• Presentation Dress Rehearsal!

• Each group will deliver a 5-6 minute presentation about its project. The 'audience' will have 2-3 minutes to ask questions after each talk. You should practice your presentation before class at least 3 times; remember to focus on contributions and results, and don't go over 6 minutes. We will critique presentations as a class in preparation for the public final presentations.
• Each group should hand in a PDF of the slideshow (export from PowerPoint, Keynote, or whatever you're using) by the start of class. It's fine if this changes before your final presentation. Please name the file login1_login2_login3.pdf to correspond with the group members.