VISUALIZATION

The University of Southern California announced today that it has received a $75,000 grant from AT&T to support the creation of a data visualization wall at USC. The new technology will provide faculty and students with an interactive, multimedia research and teaching resource that enables collaboration on complex data and monitoring of large, long-term scientific computations. To acknowledge the corporate support for this advanced technology, the wall will be known as the AT&T Data Visualization Wall, in recognition of the company's position as a global leader in local, long distance, Internet and transaction-based voice and data services. "AT&T is committed to investing in programs that use technology to improve the quality of teaching and learning," said AT&T Sales Vice President Diana Clark, Los Angeles. "With AT&T's longstanding commitment to education, we are proud to support USC's creation of a data visualization wall, which will use advanced technologies to help students and faculty in their research, communications and collaboration in the years to come." The data visualization wall, also known as an access grid, consists of a collection of technologies designed to share complex information in visual, aural and written formats. The data visualization wall project, led by USC's Center for High Performance Computing and Communications, will involve building a room featuring wall-sized, high-resolution video screens surrounded by monitors and audio equipment. The room will include high-speed network access for sharing data over wide geographic areas, and computers to link the equipment and perform data processing. In such a multimedia environment, users will be able to distribute and share complex data and information, collaborate on group work, and even interact with scholars at other universities. It will, in essence, help de-mystify what goes on inside the supercomputer when it performs a gigantic calculation using parallel technologies. "USC has been a leader in grid computing and multimedia technologies. Installation of the AT&T Data Visualization Wall represents an important advance in our effort to use these technologies on campus, and will help to enhance USC's reputation as a leading research university," said Jerry D. Campbell, USC's chief information officer and dean of university libraries. The data visualization wall system is designed for real-time, group-to-group communications that require heavy computing power to analyze complex data. It is particularly beneficial for groups working on large-scale research projects, such as geologists studying earthquakes or medical researchers investigating computational biology. It can also be used to support large groups in teleconferenced meetings, seminars, lectures, tutorials and training. USC students taking specialized "directed study" courses--courses in which students work one-on-one with faculty on special projects--may participate in collaborations using the AT&T Data Visualization Wall during their studies. For example, a geology student might take part in a collaborative session to examine data from an earthquake simulation. Participants in the session could see diagrams of the earth's crust, analyze data from an onscreen table, and discuss the results with scientists at external institutions.