Research
My research aims to advance the state-of-the-art in data visualization. While a large effort of mine has been to exploit high performance computing for achieving interactive visualization or just making possible large data visualization, I have also begun to look into the exploratory and user interface aspects of the data visualization problem. An important concept I have introduced is that the user interface of a visualization system is the visualization displayed. One key approach is to integrate machine intelligence into the process of visualization. Scientists are then able to concentrate on data exploration and interpretation rather than on user interface artifacts. It's also very beneficial to be able to reuse and share scientists' visualization experience. The new visualization technologies my research team is developing can therefore drastically raise scientists' visualization productivity by allowing them to verify their understanding and more effectively communicate and share with others their findings. I am very glad to see many others have joined me in the same research endeavor. More recently, I have also launched several new threads of research in visual analytics and collaborative visualization.
Specific research directions of interest include:
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Big Data Visualization
We are entering a data-rich era. Advanced computing, imaging, and sensing technologies enable scientists to study natural and physical phenomena at unprecedented precision, resulting in an explosive growth of data. The size of the collected information about the Web and mobile device users is expected to be even greater. To make sense and maximize utilization of such vast amounts of data for knowledge discovery and decision making, we need a new set of tools beyond conventional data mining and statistical analysis. Visualization has been shown very effective in understanding large, complex data, and thus become an indispensable tool for many areas of research and practice. We have been developing new concepts to further advance the visualization technology as a powerful discovery and communication tool.
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In Situ Data Analysis, Reduction, and Visualization
The ability to do data triage and visualization during a simulation run becomes more and more essential as scientific supercomputing moves from terascale and petascale to exascle. We have been studying the feasibility and requirements of in situ processing over the past few years. In situ analysis and visualization is clearly on our national research roadmap, and many others are joining us in this very important direction.
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Information Visualization and Visual Analytics
Our research in information visualization focuses on very large graph visualization, visual data mining, social network analysis, software evolution, and computer security visualization. We are also interested in studying the information visualization aspect of scientific visualization problems.
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Scientific Storytelling
We aim to add to existing visualization systems the support for storytelling using illustrative visualizations, animations, annotations, and sound.
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Parallel & Distributed Visualization
Visualizing large, complex volume data demands parallel or Grid-based solutions. We intend to realize a fully parallelized visualization pipeline. We have developed scalable parallel rendering algorithms for a variety of volume data, designed highly efficient software and hardware image compositing solutions, and built clusters targeting large-scale visualization applications. Most of the performance studies have been done on the massively parallel computers operated at LANL, LBL, LLNL, and PSC.
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Visualization Interfaces
We develop visual interfaces that can help scientists keep track of their visualization experience and findings, use it to generate new visualizations, and share it with others. We also investigate how intelligent systems can assist sophisticated, time-consuming visualization tasks, and consequently simplify the user interfaces for performing the tasks.
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Expressive Visualization
We aim at improving the expressiveness of visualizations through the use of artistic inspired methods, non-photorealistic rendering techniques, and highly interactive user interfaces. Visualizations should be made by using the appropriate level of abstraction according to the purpose of visualization, and the visualizations should be perceptually effective to deliver the most relevant information in the data.
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Volume Visualization
Volume data arises in a large subset of scientific, engineering, and biomedical applications. We aim to develop new methodologies for more efficient and effective volume segmentation and visualization.
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Time-Varying Volume Data Visualization
Time-varying data visualization presents some unique challenges. Our goal is to drastically improve the interactivity and explorability of large-scale, time-varying data visualization through the study and development of innovative data reduction methods, rendering and interaction techniques, and system integration strategies tailored to the characteristics of several representative leading-edge applications. Check out our new NSF ITR project.
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Current research projects are sponsored by HP Labs, Nokia Research, AT&T Labs, NSF FODAVA, NSF PetaApps, NSF HECURA, NSF CyberTrust, DOE SciDAC, DOE BER, and Air Force STTR.
Previous and Current NSF Projects
- NSF IIS 1255237: Investigation of Techniques for Creating Storytelling Animations During Data Exploration
- NSF IIS 1147363: The 1st Symposium on Large Data Analysis and Visualization
- NSF CCF 1025269: Modeling the Uncertainty Due to Data/Visual Transformations using Sensitivity Analysis
- NSF CCF 0938114: Visual Characterization of I/O System Behavior for High-End Computing
- NSF OCI 0905008: Petascale Computing Visualization, and Science Discovery of Turbulent Sooting Flames (PI: Hong G. Im)
- NSF OCI 0850566: In Situ Processing and Visualization for Peta- and Exa-Scale Simulations
- NSF CCF 0811422: Intelligence Augmented Visualization
- NSF CCF 0808896: Uncertainty-Aware Data Transformations for Collaborative Reasoning
- NSF OCI 0749227: Towards Petascale Simulation of Urban Earthquake Impacts (PI: Jacobo Bielak)
- NSF OCI 0749217: First-Principles Molecular Dynamics for Petascale Computers (PI: Francois Gygi)
- NSF CNS 0716691: Visual Characterization and Analysis of Network Traffic
- NSF CCF 0634913: Incorporating Uncertainty for Trustworthy Visualization
- NSF IIS 0552334: Intelligent Visualization Interfaces
- NSF CNS 0551727: A Cluster Infrastructure for High-Performance Visualization and Interface Research
- NSF CNS 0523450: Workshop on Visualization for Computer Security
- NSF OCI 0325934: ITR: Gleaning Insight into Large Time-Varying Scientific and Engineering Data
- NSF CCF 0301194: PECASE: Parallel Visualization and Interaction Techniques for Exploring Large Scale Volume Data
- NSF CCF 0222991: A Metadata-Driven Visualization Interface Technology for Scientific Data Exploration
- NSF CNS 0220147: ITR: An Interactive Visual Anomaly Detection System for Faults and Intrusions on Network Protocols (PI: Felix Wu)
- NSF CCF 0135439: CAREER: Parallel Visualization and Interaction Techniques for Exploring Large Scale Volume Data