First Class: Thu 9/4

Introduction

• Goals
• Organization
• Schedule
• Definition of Visualization

• Sign up for a CS account
• 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!
• Email Steve a small photo of yourself to include on the website

Tue 9/9

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

Read before class, with an eye toward your essay:

• 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 (show/hide)

  • Part of a lobbying effort for national funding, the Data and Visualization Corridorsgives 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 handed in as yourLogin.txt
• A fictional essay, 250-750 words. The setting is 5-20 years in the future, and the story should describe how cs237 influenced that future you. In particular, it should describe a plausible way that you will have solved or addressed one or more of the visualization research topics from the readings. Hand in as yourLogin2.txt, as described for personal background handin.

Thur 9/11

• 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:

• Watch this animation on YouTube about NSF's review process
• 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 et al.). 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.
• After writing your own review (see Deliverables), read NSF reviews of the proposal and add any new discussion questions to your review.
• Read the RFP for class projects
• Consult the list of project ideas

Deliverables (10am)

• Hand in your own review for the ITR grant as yourLogin.txt
• Hand in a list of four possible collaborators for your class project as yourLogin2.txt. The collaborators can be from class or from other disciplines. 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 9/18. These meetings will help you develop the interdisciplinary part of the 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 9/16

• 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
• Read annual status report to NSF. Once again, this gives a feel for what NSF is interested in.
• 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 and hand it in as yourLogin.txt. Do the review before reading the NSF reviews.
• Continue interviewing possible collaborators.

Thur 9/18

• VR demos in the old Cave
• Discuss project ideas

Note: Class will meet at the Cave in the Granoff Center, Studio 4

• Read Request For Proposals (RFP)
• Browse previous CS237 proposals linked on the Ideas page

• Interview reports as yourLogin.txt
• Three possible proposal titles as yourLogin2.txt. 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 9/23

• Review and discuss NIH proposal
  Quantitative Inverse Electrocardiography (Johnson)

• 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 NIH guide to proposals, focusing on the specification of a proposal (pg. 1-16), research plan details (pg. 17), review criteria (pg. 34), and other interesting and relevant parts you find
• Read this PowerPoint presentation about the NIH proposal review process

• Your review of Johnson's NIH grant as yourLogin.txt

Thur 9/25

• Review and discuss NSF proposal
  Development of a Next-Generation Interactive Virtual-Reality Display Environment for Science (Laidlaw et al.)
• Visit the YURT at the end of class

Note: Class will meet in CIT 506

• Read MRI: Development of a Next-Generation Interactive Virtual-Reality Display Environment for Science (Laidlaw et al.)

• Your review of the Cave proposal as yourLogin.txt

Tue 9/30

• Cave (vrg3d) sample code walkthrough
• Visualizing multi-dimensional data

Slides about the Cave demo app are available here

• 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).

• Sign up for a presentation time using this Doodle survey
• Hand in results from literature search as yourLogin.txt

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 10/02

• Proposal presentations

• Preliminary proposal handed in as yourLogin.pdf
• A template for your proposal can be downloaded here. See the README inside for more instructions.
• Presentation slides handed in as yourLogin_slides.pptx or pdf

Make sure your proposal is saved as a pdf. 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.

Tue 10/07

• Proposal presentations

• Begin reading proposals from /assignments/10-02/all_proposals.pdf
• Find your four assigned proposals here

Thur 10/09

• Improving proposals and examples
• "Walking > Walking-in-Place > Flying"
• Evaluating visualizations

Links to papers for in-class activity:

• "Walking > Walking-in-Place > Flying, in Virtual Environments", Usoh et al., In Proceedings of SIGGRAPH, 1999.
• "Empirical Studies in Information Visualization Evaluation: Seven Scenarios", Lam et al., IEEE TVCG 18, 9 (September 2012).

• Read proposals from /assignments/10-02/all_proposals.pdf
• Find your four assigned proposals here

• Review the first-draft 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.

Tue 10/14

• Walkthrough of a project budget
• Insight-based evaluation: what is it, and should you use it?

Link to paper for in-class activity:

• "An Insight-Based Methodology for Evaluating Bioinformatics Visualizations", Saraiya et al., TVCG, 2005.

• Final proposal handed in as yourLogin.pdf

Thur 10/16

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

Link for in-class activity:

• Table of linked reviews and NIH-style proposal scores: here

• Read final proposals from /assignments/10-14/all_proposals.pdf
• Find your four assigned proposals here

• Review the final proposals assigned to you. For the final proposals, you only need to hand in reviews for the two proposals where you are R1 or R2. You must read the proposals for which you are R3/R4 and be prepared to discuss them in class. 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.
• Respond to the quick questions in this form as yourLogin.txt

Tue 10/21

• Week 1 check-in on projects
• Teams sketch methods and results on whiteboard

• 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.

Thur 10/23

• Groups finish sketching methods and results on whiteboard
• Students annotate other project sketches

In class, we'll look at the whiteboard project sketches together and everyone will get a chance to add questions and other feedback for each project.

Tue 10/28

• Week 2 check-in on projects
• Review VIS 2014 program
• Keywords, topics in VIS papers
• Finding related work

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

• Mega-sheet with Related Work and VIS paper scores (must belong to cs237-f14 Google Group to access)

Thur 10/30

• Guest: Ryan Boller
• Life after CS237
• Iterating from class project to publication
• Finding related work (cont.)

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

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

Tue 11/04

• Week 3 check-in on project schedules
• What is going well?
• Challenges and questions

In class, we'll look at each group's project schedule.

Thur 11/06

• Web-based vis and toolkits
• Brain connectivity demo

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 of a web-based visualization built with the d3.js library. These tools might be of use to you for your projects, or for future visualization development.

Tue 11/18

• Week 5 check-in on project schedules
• What is going well?
• Challenges and questions
• Reading VIS 2014 papers

In class, we will quickly read and evaluate recent visualization papers from the 2014 IEEE visualization conferences.

• VIS papers mega-sheet for class activity (must belong to cs237-f14 Google Group to access)

Thur 11/20

• Reading (and re-writing) papers

In class, we will split into groups and re-write the abstracts of papers to improve them.

• VIS papers mega-sheet for class activity (must belong to cs237-f14 Google Group to access)

Tue 11/25

• Week 6 check-in on project schedules
• Discussion of final plans for projects
• Remaining challenges and questions

• 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 12/02

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

In class, we will look at examples of successful two-page research abstracts.

• Skim the two-page abstracts from the Best Posters from the recent 2014 IEEE VisWeek conferences (SciVis, InfoVis, VAST).
  • SciVis: "VCMass: A Framework for Verification of Coronal Mass Ejection Ensemble Simulations", Bock et al.
  • InfoVis: "Glidgets: Interactive Glyphs for Exploring Dynamic Graphs", Kondo et al.
  • VAST: "PIVE: Per-Iteration Visualization Environment for Supporting Real-time Interactions with Computational Methods", Choo et al.

  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 12/04

• Presentation Dress Rehearsal!

In class, 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 three 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.
• Use the feedback you receive in class to revise your final presentation.

• Hand in a pdf of your slideshow (one per group). Name the file login1_login2.pdf corresponding to the group members.