ACADEMIA

The first-ever East Carolina University (ECU) Visualization Challenge brought a standing room only crowd to the campus on April 23, as eight students displayed their creative and technical abilities during a competition held by the RENCI at ECU Engagement Center and the Center for Coastal Systems Informatics and Modeling. Additional sponsors for the event included the Coastal Maritime Council, the Center for Natural Hazards Research, the Thomas Harriott College of Arts and Sciences, and the Department of Geography’s Center for GIS Science. The call for challenge entries elicited projects ranging from the reconstruction of historic sailing craft to animated depictions of hurricane-induced flooding on the Outer Banks. The common thread uniting all the entries was implementation of the 20-foot x 6-foot visualization wall at the RENCI center. Thomas Allen, co-director of the Center for Geographic Information Science and director of technology for RENCI at ECU, served as facilitator for the project. Noting that ECU is the first RENCI partner institution to hold a visualization competition, Allen commented, “The students participating in this challenge have put the visualization wall through its paces more than any faculty members so far!” Top honors went to Eric Ray, a graduate student in maritime studies, for his 3D reconstruction of the 18th century sloop Lady Washington, the first American flagship to round Cape Horn en route to the Pacific Northwest. The reconstruction is remarkable because no traces of the ship exist today—the only surviving records of her appearance are a commemorative coin and a painting done by her first mate. Ray used Rhinoceros rapid prototyping software and a contemporary colonial shipbuilding manual to generate his images. Such reconstructions, Ray says, could be a valuable tool for museum outreach. Erik Ray's visualization on the 20-foot x 6-foot visualization wall at RENCI at ECU First runner-up Robert Howard, a graduate student in geological science, presented “Stormwater Runoff Response of Fornes Branch, Greenville, NC,” which uses a hydrological model to predict the speed at which precipitation drains from a 2.5 km2 area of Greenville. Howard paired a soil permeability map with a graph of the predicted and actual runoff rates over time to predict areas where flooding will occur. He sees his work, still in its early stages, as potentially “enhancing the ability of the public to understand their own city.” Other Visualization Challenge participants were Chris Betancourt, graduate student in biology, with “Multi-Parameter Visualization Toolkit;” Nadine Kopf, graduate student, maritime studies, with “3D Photogrammetric Model of the Hjortspring Boat;” David Lagomasino, graduate student, geology, with “Time-Series Water Quality Profiles of the Tar-Pamlico River Estuary;” Suzanne McArdle and Garrett Nelson, graduate students, geography, with “Modeling Storm Surges for Communicating Hazards to the Public;” and Laurynas Gedminas, undergraduate, geography, with “Greenland Ice Sheet Meltdown.” Allen introduced each contestant and presented the awards. Tom Allen, technology director at RENCI at ECU, welcomes participants and spectators to the Visualization Challenge, held April 23 at RENCI’s engagement center on the ECU campus. J.P. Walsh, a faculty member in geology, provided advice and support throughout the planning and staging of the competition. In the weeks before the event, graduate students from the geography department helped entrants become familiar with the workings of the visualization wall. Judges for the Challenge included Derek Alderman (geography), David Mallinson (geological science), David Stewart (maritime studies), Carl Twarog (art), and Sarat Kocherlakota (senior visualization researcher at RENCI). Now that the challenge precedent has been set, the coming years should bring exciting developments in visualization work by ECU students, both graduate and undergraduate, in a widening array of fields. A statement in the National Science Foundation’s Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge synopsis applies not to science alone, but to all areas of intellectual endeavor: “Some of science’s most powerful statements are not made in words...To illustrate is, etymologically and actually, to enlighten.” --story by Donna Kain and Miriam Wildeman