This year marks the 20th anniversary of Purdue’s Envision Center, and on April 17th, the center will host a day of events to celebrate the occasion.

Quick Look

-Open House, 4/17/24, 10 a.m. until 12 p.m.—The Envision Center will commemorate its 20th anniversary with an open house. Attendees will have the opportunity to experience cutting-edge collaborative virtual experiences firsthand and engage with the development team dedicated to their advancement at Purdue University. This event is free and open to the public, welcoming all interested individuals to participate.

-XR Symposium, 4/17/24, 1 p.m. until 5 p.m.—The Envision Center will host an XR Symposium consisting of speakers from across campus sharing the impact of their efforts leveraging virtual and augmented reality technologies at Purdue. Seating is limited for this event, register here: https://purdue.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_cJgDlDqAjCpSMrI

Envisioning the Future of Research and Education

One of the many groups within Purdue’s Rosen Center for Advanced Computing (RCAC), the Envision Center is dedicated to assisting, supporting, and collaborating with faculty, students, and industry in scientific visualization, virtual and augmented reality, and media creation. The center’s staff and student employees work with faculty partners and external clients to create virtual reality (VR) and data visualization tools for research and educational use. Over the years, Envision has worked on a wide variety of projects, from creating virtual labs for aeronautics and electrical engineering to developing a visualization platform that can illustrate 3D supernova remnants for classroom usage and more. The center also collaborates on grant proposals and develops promotional media such as publication-quality stills and animated videos.

To commemorate its 20-year anniversary, the Envision Center will host an open house from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. on April 17, 2024. The open house is free and open to the public. During the open house, products of Envision's range of services will be on display, including photogrammetry and motion capture systems. Attendees will also be able to experience the newly developed Collab XR platform. This platform is a shared environment that allows anyone in a headset to view and interact with the same virtual content pieces together, viewed in fully virtual (the entire field of vision is virtual, obscuring all of the real environment, and other participants appear as virtual avatars) or passthrough augmented reality (cameras feed the real room and people to the headset view, overlaying virtual content to appear to exist in the same space). The Collab XR will showcase a variety of the Envision projects first-hand, including radiation detection simulation, supernova data visualizations, weather system visualizations, insect models, and more. To view an example of the Collab XR platform, please visit the Envision XR Lab webpage: https://www.rcac.purdue.edu/envision/xr-lab

After a one-hour lunch break, the 20th-year anniversary festivities will resume with an XR Symposium. This symposium will take place in the Envision Center from 1 p.m. until 5 p.m. and will feature multiple speakers from across campus, all highlighting the ways in which they have leveraged virtual and augmented reality technologies at Purdue. The list of presentations and speakers are as follows:

-1:00 p.m.—“XR Lab, Collaborative XR platform, and Purdue XR Consortium.” George Takahashi, Danny Milisavljevic

-1:25 pm—“Immersive Visualization in Large Lectures.” Voicu Popescu, Bedrich Benes, Alejandra Magana, John Springer

-1:50 p.m.—“XR Workshop, use of technologies in classrooms.” Victoria Lowell, Stuart White

-2:15 p.m.—“Immersive VR Anatomy Training for Biomedical Engineers.” Matthew Ward

-2:45 p.m.—“Augmented Reality Assessment Platform to Evaluate the Effectiveness of Technique-Based Training Simulations.” Kara Weatherman, Stylianos Chatzidakis, WanJu Huang

-3:10 p.m.—“Application of VR in Food Science Education.” Senay Simsek, Ben Paxson

-3:35 p.m.—“Integrating artificial intelligence with virtual reality to support soft skills development for STEM students.” Kris Acheson-Clair, Tawfiq Salem, Mesut Akdere

-4:05 p.m.—XR Panel discussion with speakers, plus Dr. Hua Cai and Dr. Shinyong Jung

Once the presentations are complete, a panel discussion will follow, focusing on topics such as XR in the classroom, barriers to entry for XR usage, accessibility, support, and outreach.

The Envision Center is in Stewart Center, Room B001, which is located off the tunnel between the Stewart Center and the Purdue Memorial Union.

For more information about working with the Envision Center or to learn how to access the XR Lab, please visit: https://www.rcac.purdue.edu/envision/xr-lab-consultation

The Envision Center also offers tours throughout the year. To schedule a tour, please visit: https://www.rcac.purdue.edu/about/tour