Open house, tour to highlight campus resource for research visualization
An open house and tour of ITaP’s Envision Center is aimed at faculty, graduate students and research staff from any field who may want to visualize, animate or employ virtual reality in their research, or for teaching purposes.
The open house will take place from 2 to 4 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 17, with the tour from 3 to 4 p.m., in the Envision Center, Stewart Center, Room B001, which is located off the tunnel between the Stewart Center and the Purdue Memorial Union.
The Envision Center uses a blend of technology and art to help enhance research and teaching by graphically representing data and information. It specializes in technology and techniques such as data visualization and analysis; virtual simulation; human-computer interaction; and media creation, including video and animations.
Besides operating the hardware and software, expert staff and students at the Envision Center consult on ways to graphically represent research and enhance teaching and collaborate on grants, including building proof-of-concept demos that may be needed for proposals.
“The open house will allow people to view our work and see what we are capable of doing,” says George Takahashi, Envision Center technical lead. “We’ll explain how the technology works and how we use it at the Envision Center. The goal is to make the technology more accessible, understandable and enticing to Purdue researchers and instructors.”
The Envision Center’s use by faculty is broad. Recent projects have ranged from 3-D visualization of data on the fluid mechanics of the Great Lakes to a life-sized interactive virtual clean room for training pharmacy students. The virtual clean room can be projected in a four-walled immersive virtual environment at the center and also is usable on portable virtual reality equipment.
Envision also created a scientifically based animated video showing how Mars may have formed; animated the Nobel Prize-winning work of chemistry Professor Ei-ichi Negishi for a general audience; and built and deployed a Web-based, 3-D virtual version of ABIL, Purdue’s model accessible biology wet lab.
For more information about Envision Center services, contact George Takahashi, Envision Center technical lead, 49-61862, gtakahas@purdue.edu, or Jon Wright, Envision Center project manager, 49-43165, jdwright@purdue.edu.