VizWorld.com

Post Graduate Employment Options & Opportunities in the United States. via Visual Loop

infographics education, employment

Boston University is running a free week-long tutorial series on Scientific Visualization and High Performance Scientific Computing that includes introductions to Scientific Visualization and training on tools like ParaView and VTK.

In addition to covering concepts, techniques, and tools which researchers may use in their own computing environments, these tutorials are designed to help you make effective use of the Boston University Scientific Computing Facility and its related scientific visualization resources.

Full details are available on their site, but most of the SciVis tutorials are today and tomorrow.

via Scientific Computing and Visualization Summer Tutorial Series » TechWeb » Boston University.

Science education, paraview, tutorials, vtk

Protovis is a great Javascript-based data visualization toolkit for your web browser that is gaining popularity for it’s ease of use and powerful capabilities.  As browsers get more and more powerful and JavaScript engines improve, less and less of this is falling into the realm of Flash and static images, and ProtoVis is on the forefront of the change.  Robert Kosara has been teaching ProtoVis for a little while to his students, and has published the first of a series of “ProtoVis Primers” on his website.

This introduction is based on my experiences with using Protovis in my Visualization and Visual Communication class earlier this spring. While the concepts involved are really not that difficult, they are rather foreign to students who have not been exposed to functional programming. And since that is also the case for a lot of hobbyists and people wanting to do visualization who do not have a computer science background, I imagine they run into the same problems.

via A Protovis Primer, Part 1 | eagereyes.

Science education, protovis, tutorial

NVidia is embracing the popularity of CUDA and GPU Compute algorithms by creating a new “CUDA Certification Program” and a new NVResearch Online Portal.  This new training program will work with their CUDA Research Centers and CUDA Teaching Centers to pump out qualified engineers with experience and knowledge in developing GPGPU algorithms.

“There are now more than 350 universities worldwide teaching the CUDA programming model within their curriculum and more than 100 000 programmers actively developing applications that use the GPU ” said Sanford Russell general manager of CUDA & GPU Computing at NVIDIA. “These new programs will encourage this work and develop collaborations that will advance GPGPU adoption across a wide variety of industries.”

I do find it curious that it’s a CUDA Certification and not an OpenCL or GPGPU certification.  Of course, it’s in NVidia’s best interest to push CUDA but a bit of a slap in the face to Khronos and other OpenCL folks.

via NVIDIA Launches New Research, Training and Certification Programs for Developers Focused on GPU Computing – MarketWatch.

Science cuda, education, nvidia

If you want to brush up on VRay, 3dsMax, or Mental Ray then check out these free 1-hour webinars being offered by CGSchool next month.  The classes are overviews of their longer, more exhaustive classes, so you’ll get a taste of what you might see in the full (paid) class and maybe learn something for free in the process.

June 7 – Internet Marketing for Arch. Visualization (live from Spine3D in U.S.) – Brian Zajac

June 8 – V-Ray Advanced (live from the Chaos Group in Bulgaria) – Brian Smith

June 9 – 3ds Max Advanced Modeling (live from Spine3D in U.S.) – Alex Gorbunov

June 10 – mental ray Beginner (live from India) – Pete Draper

June 11 – PF Track (live from U.K.) – Mike Merron

Registration details are on their site.

via CGschool |  Register.

Graphics cgschool, education, training

I first saw the news of the CI Fellow program (Computing Innovation) over at InsideHPC, but blew it off as irrelevant to us here.  Looks like I might have been a bit hasty, as now Robert Kosara (eagereyes) has announced that he is one of the mentors and is looking to take someone on at UNC Charlotte.

I am interested in two broad areas: theory of information visualization and visualization for visual communication. The theory side is about some of the topics described in my recent Year of InfoVis Theory article, and obviously thinking that topic further. Communication is about how to get information across to people, so they're engaged and retain that information. Perhaps that involves lots of embellishments, or perhaps it involves storytelling, or perhaps something else entirely. There’s only one way to find out.

To qualify, you have to complete you Ph.D. between May 1 2009 and August 31 2010, and you’ll be paid $75k a year plus benefits for the work.

via Come Work With Me! | EagerEyes.org.

Science education, job, research

UK’s TimesOnline has a short article talking to some people at Bournemouth University, home of the National Centre for computer Animation, and stomping ground to over 50 VFX artists that helped to create the stereoscopic epic Avatar.  In the article they discuss that not only is graphics and design talent important, but so is a good understand of math and physics.

The skills needed to create stunning computer-generated effects can be attributed to a rare combination of talents. According to Saf Efstathiou, computer animation course leader at Bournemouth University: “When we are recruiting students, we look for high grades in maths and in art. Disciplines like physics, chemistry and IT can also be very important. A lot of maths students don’t realise that there’s a very creative environment open to them.”

via And you thought being a maths geek was going to be boring . . . – Times Online.

Science avatar, education, vfx

Time for another in our ongoing Second Life series, and this time I’m going to tackle Education in Virtual Worlds.  Again, not a particularly new advance.  Several universities have begun to embrace “online courses”, coupling traditional education tools with web-based systems like Blackboard to increase revenue with a minimum of expense.  It allows teachers to very easily re-use class materials (doesn’t get much easier than cut-n-paste, or simply clicking a “publish” button from their library of assets), and enables the university to open classes to students around the world.

Virtual Worlds are becoming the “next generation” of these online courses, and Second Life is on the forefront of the wave.

Read more…

Graphics, Science education, feature, secondlife, virtual worlds

Leslie Hope Jarmon, UT Austin Faculty member and instructor, pioneered instructional uses of virtual worlds in educational environments, co-founding the Educators Corp virtual community of interdisciplinary educators, researchers, and libraries from around the world.  She was instrumental in a $250,000 Grant for “Building Immersive Instructional Experiences and Learning Communities in Second Life” initiative at UT.  But that’s not all:

She was designated principal investigator for the first-in-the-world project that includes 16 academic, medical and health science university campuses. Hosting almost 200,000 students and 7,500 faculty, the UT System has funded the creation of a virtual 49-island archipelago in Second Life (SL), with three islands per campus and one central island for System-wide collaboration and administrative activities. It is designed to foster extensive collaboration within and among the UT System’s campuses by means of an open, online virtual platform that can be networked, customized, adapted and expanded.

Let us hope that someone else will pick up her torch and keep innovating on uses of virtual worlds in education.

UT Austin News

Obituary

Science education, secondlife, virtual worlds

For researchers and educators looking to bring real-time rendering and gaming technology into the classroom, Crytek is now offering free educational licenses to certain individuals.

CryENGINE® 3 Educational SDK is for internal, non-commercial use; and is available only to educational institutions. We do not license individual student or group projects. Course leaders will have access to all available CryENGINE® 3 support materials – and students can access a specialist educational community area of www.crymod.com, to share experiences, showcase projects and help each other achieve amazing results with the CryENGINE® 3.

Eligibility requires special registration and legal documentation, full details on their site.

via Crytek | MyCryENGINE.

Science cryengine, crytek, education, sdk