Thu 9/6, 2018

• Goals
• Organization
• Schedule
• Definition of Visualization

To Do

• Send Fumeng (fumeng_yang at brown.edu) two things: (1) your prefered gmail account(s) and (2) a small photo of yourself to include on the website; Fumeng will send your the username and password to access the protected files.
• Test if you can use the team drive after Fumeng adds you.

Tue 9/11, 2018

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

Reading

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
  • 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

Deliverables (9am)

• Personal background handed in as yourBrownShortID.txt
• A fictional essay, 250-750 words. The setting is 5-20 years in the future, and the story should describe how CSCI2370 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 yourBrownShortID-2.txt, as described for personal background handin.

Thu 9/13, 2018

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

Reading

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 (9am)

• Hand in your own review for the ITR grant as yourBrownShortID.txt
• Hand in a list of four possible collaborators for your class project as yourBrownShortID-2.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 9/25. 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 9/18, 2018

• 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

Reading

• 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.

Deliverables (9am)

• Write your own review ( using this form) of the CAREER proposal and hand it in as yourBrownShortID.txt. Do the review before reading the NSF reviews.
• Continue interviewing possible collaborators.

Thu 9/20, 2018

• VR demos in the YURT
• Discuss project ideas

Note: Class will meet at the YURT (180 George Street)

Reading

• Read Request For Proposals (RFP)
• Browse previous CSCI2370 proposals linked on the Ideas page

Deliverables (9am)

• Three possible proposal titles as yourBrownShortID-2.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 9/25, 2018

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

Reading

• 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

Deliverables (9am)

• Interview reports as yourBrownShortID.txt
• Your review of Johnson’s NIH grant as yourBrownShortID-2.txt

Thu 9/27, 2018

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

Reading

• Read MRI: Development of a Next-Generation Interactive Virtual-Reality Display Environment for Science (Laidlaw et al.)
• Skim HCC: Small: Collaborative Research: Immersive Visualization and 3D Interaction for Volume Data Analysis (Bowman, Socha, and Laidlaw) and CHS: Small: How Much Virtual Reality is Enough

Deliverables (9am)

• Your review of the Cave proposal as yourBrownShortID.txt

Tue 10/2, 2018

• Visualization tools
• Visualizing multi-dimensional data

Reading

• 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).

Deliverables (9am)

• Hand in results from literature search as yourBrownShortID.txt

You should do this search on the project you are most seriously considering doing out of all the ideas you have. Look here (Question 3 Where do I search for research papers?) 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.

Thu 10/4, 2018

• more "Visualization Handbook"

Deliverables (9am)

• Sign up for a presentation time in the spreadsheet posted in the Google drive Collaborators Meetings & Proposal Presentations (top-level, the same file used for collaborators meetings, but use the second tab.)
• Preliminary proposal handed in as yourBrownShortID.pdf
• A template for your proposal can be downloaded here. See the README inside for more instructions.

Make sure your proposal is saved as a pdf.

Tue 10/9, 2018

• Proposal presentations

Reading

• Begin reading proposals from the shared Google Team Drive 10-11/Preliminary Proposals

Deliverables (9am)

• Presentation slides handed in as yourBrownShortID_slides.pptx or pdf

Thu 10/11, 2018

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

Reading

• “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 the shared Google Team Drive 10-11/Preliminary Proposals

Deliverables (9am)

• Find your review assignment within the same folder / the top level of the shared drive.
• Review of 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 David reviews Fumeng's proposal, he should hand in a file called fyang7_by_dhl.txt.

Tue 10/16, 2018

• 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.

Deliverables (9am)

• Final proposal handed in as yourBrownShortID.pdf

Thu 10/18, 2018

• Study section (evaluate, score, “fund” proposals)

Link for in-class activity:

• Table of linked reviews and NIH-style proposal scores: {TBD}

Reading

• Read final proposals from the shared Google Team Drive /10-18/all_proposals.pdf
• Find your in the spreadsheet posted within the same folder / the top level of the shared drive.

Deliverables (9am)

• Review the final proposals assigned to you. For the final proposals, you only need to hand in reviews for the three proposals where you are R1, R2, or R3. 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 David reviews Fumeng's proposal, he should hand in a file called fyang7_by_dhl.txt.
• Respond to the quick questions in this form as yourBrownShortID.txt

Tue 10/30, 2018

Class cancelled

Deliverables (9am)

• 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_yourBrownShortID.txt.

Thu 11/1, 2018

Class cancelled

Tue 11/6, 2018

• Check-in on projects
• Review VIS 2018 program
  • Keywords, topics in VIS papers
• Finding related work

In class, we will quickly read and evaluate recent visualization papers from the 2018 IEEE visualization conferences.

• Mega-sheet with Related Work and VIS paper scores
• IEEE VIS 2018 Program

Thu 11/8, 2018

• Check-in on projects
• Review VIS 2018 program
• Relate your project to the VIS conference

Tue 11/13, 2018

• Check-in on project schedules
  • What is going well?
  • Challenges and questions

Deliverables (9am)

• Prepare a Gatt chart for your project progress
• Be ready to show and discuss your project progress/Gatt chart with others in class

Thu 11/15, 2018

• Reading VIS 2018 papers