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Home > News and Events
News and Events:
SCIRun Version 4.0 Released!
The NIH/NCRR Center for Integrative Biomedical Computing (CIBC) is pleased to announce the release of the 4.0 version of the SCIRun software suite. SCIRun is a problem solving environment for biomedical problems that is based on a dataflow paradigm. The new version contains many bug fixes, a new interface and many new modules. The new 4.0 version is now available as binary download for both OS X and Windows XP/Vista as well as a source download for other platforms.
To download the new SCIRun version 4.0, go to our CIBC Software portal.
For questions and further information on the 4.0 SCIRun release, please visit the CIBC webiste software page or contact 
SCI Research on Display at SLC Library
The SCI Institute, in partnership with the Department of Radiology has been working towards new goals in public outreach. A three-part exhibit is now on display at the Salt Lake Public Library and includes hands-on multi-media, Q and A from the University's leading radiologists, a four lecture series, and a 20 piece gallery display which will run through December. Overall, it has been a great success and has opened the public eye to a glimpse of what we are working on.
Software Provides New Method for Interactive Visual Data Analysis
SCI Graduate Student Geoff Draper has developed a new system for interactively visualizing data that may eventually allow users to quickly pose questions and retrieve answers from complex data such as election polls and opinion surveys. Working with Drs. Yarden Livnat and Richard Riesenfeld his thesis adviser, they have built a demonstration software package to show the concept in action. This system generates a radial chart consisting of three parts: An outer ring displays one or more questions asked in the survey such as "What is your opinion of Barak Obama?" or "What is your opinion of John McCain?" An inner ring displays the results from the respondents. Parameters can be placed in the center of the rings to limit the results to a subset of respondents. The beauty of this system is that it provides a simple drag and drop method to pose interesting questions to the poll data and instantly visualize the results. The developers hope this system will one day provide TV news anchors and reporters a way to interactively explore poll data live on the air.
For more information, see:
Who Votes For What? A Visual Query Language for Opinion Data
Video Clip (20MB)
[bibtex]
G. Draper, R. Riesenfeld. “Who Votes For What? A Visual Query Language for Opinion Data,”
In Proceedings of IEEE Information Visualization (InfoVis 2008), pp. (accepted). 2008.
[bibtex]
G. Draper, Y. Livnat, R. Riesenfeld.
“A Visual Query Language for Correlation Discovery and Management,”
In Proceedings of Visual and Iconic Language Conference (VaIL 2008),
pp. 14--23.
2008.
SCI USTAR Faculty Profiled in College of Engineering Research Report
NVIDIA Recognizes University Of Utah as a CUDA Center Of Excellence
University of Utah Latest in a Growing List of Exceptional Schools Demonstrating Pioneering Work in Parallel Computing
Santa Clara, CA & Salt Lake City, UT - July 31, 2008 - NVIDIA Corporation, the worldwide leader in visual computing technologies, and the University of Utah today announced that the university has been recognized as a CUDA Center of Excellence, a milestone that marks the beginning of a significant partnership between the two organizations.
NVIDIA® CUDA™ technology is an award-winning C-compiler and software development kit (SDK) for developing computing applications on GPUs. Its inclusion in the University of Utah's curriculum is a clear indicator of the ground-swell that parallel computing using a many-core architecture is having on the high-performance computing industry. The University of Utah is also the second school to be recognized as a CUDA Center of Excellence along with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Over 50 other schools and universities now include CUDA technology as part of their Computer Science curriculum or in their research.
Distinguished members of the University of Utah's faculty and alumni have been behind a remarkable fraction of the graphics innovations made in the last 40 years, as well as pioneering companies such as Adobe, Evans & Sutherland, Pixar and Silicon Graphics. Together, NVIDIA and the University of Utah will continue this industry-changing work and deliver technologies that harness the processing power of the GPU (graphics processing units) and the award-winning CUDA programming environment.
"Often before a great discovery there is the creation of a new tool or a tool that is used in a different way than before," said Chris Johnson, director of the Scientific Computing and Imaging (SCI) Institute at the University of Utah. "GPUs and the algorithms and software that they use are today's tools and with them we are entering a golden age, where scientific computing is going to truly change the way we do science and medicine."
As a CUDA Center of Excellence, the University of Utah will be using CUDA technology extensively across three faculties:
- Scientific Computing and Imaging (SCI) Institute
- The SCI Institute has established itself as an internationally recognized leader in visualization, scientific computing, and image analysis. The overarching research objective of the SCI Institute is to create new scientific computing techniques, tools, and systems that enable solutions to important problems in biomedicine, science, and engineering. For more information: www.sci.utah.edu
- The School of Computing (until 2000 the Department of Computer Science)
- The School of Computing has a long history of distinguished faculty and alumni who have made substantial contributions to research and industry. For more information: www.cs.utah.edu/school/history. The CUDA Center will play a key role in the School's new Digital Media Initiative linking Computing with Fine Art and Film and funded by the USTAR Initiative
- Center for the Simulation of Accidental Fires and Explosions (CSAFE)
- As one of the Department of Energy's five Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) centers, Utah runs detailed simulations of high energy devices and hydro-carbon fires, designed to increase the safety of dangerous material transportation and storage.
"The synergy of graphics combined with computational horsepower provided by NVIDIA GPUs and the CUDA programming environment provides incredible opportunities in science, industry and commerce," stated Dr. Steven Parker, adjunct professor of computer science at the University of Utah and principal research scientist at NVIDIA.
"The worlds of scientific computing and computer graphics owe a great deal to the University of Utah and those who have passed through its halls," said David Kirk, chief scientist at NVIDIA. "CUDA technology has the potential to truly transform industries, as we have already seen in fields such as medicine, geophysics and finance. With a school of Utah's caliber incorporating it into their curriculum and across many of its research facilities, I am personally very excited to see what advances can be made."
The CUDA Center of Excellence at the University of Utah will be using GPU technology to make significant advances in a number of scientific applications, including seismic data processing and visualization, MRI and diffusion tensor image reconstruction, cardiac electrical wave propagation simulation, combustion and fluid dynamics simulation, and several projects in large-scale scientific visualization.
About University of Utah
With a rich 151-year history, the University of Utah's mission of teaching, research and service lives through its people and purposes. From its beautiful campus in the foothills of the Wasatch Mountains in Salt Lake City, the university reaches out to its diverse student body from all 29 Utah counties, all 50 states and 102 countries with top-rated academic departments, competitive athletics, wide-ranging cultural offerings, and innovative medical programs. In 2005 the University established the office of Technology Venture Development to accelerate the entrepreneurial spirit at the University. Since then, 61 companies have been launched from University technologies.
About NVIDIA
NVIDIA (Nasdaq: NVDA) is the world leader in visual computing technologies and the inventor of the GPU, a high-performance processor which generates breathtaking, interactive graphics on workstations, personal computers, game consoles, and mobile devices. NVIDIA serves the entertainment and consumer market with its GeForce® products, the professional design and visualization market with its Quadro® products, and the high-performance computing market with its Tesla™ products. NVIDIA is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and has offices throughout Asia, Europe, and the Americas. NVIDIA's inaugural NVISION 08 conference will be held August 25-27, 2008 in San Jose, California. For more information, visit www.nvidia.com and www.nvision08.com.
Hao Wang, et al. Receives Best Paper Award!
Congratulations to Hao Wang, Carlos Scheidegger and Dr. Cláudio Silva who received the Best Paper Award at the IEEE International Conference on Shape Modeling and Applications (SMI), 2008, for "Optimal Bandwidth Selection for MLS Surfaces".
Dr. Mike Kirby, et al. Receives Best Paper Award!
Congratulations to Tobias Martin (SOC), Dr. Elaine Cohen(SOC) and our own Dr. Mike Kirby who received the Best Paper Award at the ACM Solid and Physical Modeling International Conference (SPM) 2008, for "Volumetric Parameterization and Trivariate B-spline Fitting using Harmonic Functions".
Dr. David Brayford, et al. Receives Best Paper Award!
Congratulations go out to our own Dr. David Brayford along with Martin Turner and W.T. Hewitt who received the Ken Brodlie Best Paper prize at the Theory and Practice of Computer Graphics 2008 Conference (TPCG08) for their paper "A Physical Model for the Polarized Scattering of Light."
FEBio Profiled in BioMedical Computation
Jeff Weiss' FEBio software profiled in Spring 2008 issue of BioMedical Computation See News Bytes: "Modeling the Deformable Body".
Greg Jones Named Associate Director of Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute
The Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute is delighted to welcome Dr. Greg Jones back to the SCI Institute as our Associate Director. Dr. Jones previously served as our Associate Director from 2000 to 2005. He was then called by Governor Jon M. Huntsman to serve as the State Science Adviser to the Governor of Utah and Director of the Utah Economic Clusters Initiative from 2005 to 2007. He was awarded the 2007 Medal for Science and Technology by Utah Governor Jon M. Huntsman for his science leadership to the State of Utah. Most recently, he served as the Executive Director of Research at the Moran Eye Center. Welcome back Greg!
Tolga Tasdizen to Serve as a USTAR Faculty Member Within the SCI Institute
Dr. Tolga Tasdizen has joined the SCI faculty as an Assistant Professor of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and will become the SCI Institute's second USTAR Faculty member, joining Dr. Guido Gerig. Prior to being appointed USTAR Faculty, Tolga was a Research Assistant Professor in the School of Computing at the University of Utah. Dr. Tasdizen received his Ph.D. in Engineering from Brown University and is an expert in image processing, creating state-of-the-art research applied to biomedical and biological applications such as reconstructing neural circuit diagrams from large numbers of very high resolution microscopy images. His research interests include image analysis, computer vision and pattern recognition. The Utah Science and Technology Research Initiative (USTAR) is a state-funded, long-term effort to strengthen Utah's "knowledge economy".
Greg Jones Voted Top 100 vSpring Capital Venture Entrepreneur for 2008
Congratulations go out to our new Associate Director Greg Jones who was recently designated a v|100 - vSpring Top 100 Venture Entrepreneur. The v|100 designation is given to those individuals voted most likely to lead a successful business venture in Utah within the next few years. The v|100 is designed to help entrepreneurs and vSpring Capital establish and cultivate relationships among top CEO and CTO talent in the region. Members of this elite executive community are chosen through a peer-nominated and peer-selected process. Top members of the Utah business community were surveyed by a vSpring team to nominate the top 100 ventrue entrepreneurs in Utah. 2008 marks the fifth year of the v|100 Community. Greg was also selected as a v|100 member in 2005. Congratulations Greg!
Steve Corbató Named Director of Cyberinfrastructure Strategic Initiatives at the University of Utah
The Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute congratulates Dr. Steve Corbató on being named Director of Cyberinfrastructure Strategic Initiatives at the University of Utah. Dr. Corbató has served as the SCI Institute's Associate director since May of 2006. Steve will report directly to VP of Information Technology, Steve Hess and help the University with future cyberinfrastructure plans. While Steve will be moving to the INSCC Building, we'll definitely still see him on a regular basis as we'll work together on future computing initiatives. Steve is already working on multiple projects and ideas with SCI Institute and other University of Utah faculty.
Visualizing the Brain in a New Way
Autism Research Profiled in Salt Lake Magazine
The February 2008 Issue of Salt Lake magazine includes a profile of groundbreaking research being conducted at the University of Utah on the problem of Autism. Advancements in brain image analysis techniques developed by SCI researchers Guido Gerig, Ross Whitaker and P. Thomas Fletcher are specifically mentioned. (print version only)
