Vislab Outreach Program

	Student visitors from the University of Colorado attend a visualization lab presentation. The Vislab hosted over 140 visualization demos to visitors this year. This increases public awareness and understanding of the atmospheric and related sciences. —Photo courtesy of Rolf Kjolseth

CISL's Visualization and Enabling Technologies Section (VETS) operates a state-of-the-art visual supercomputing facility in support of the NCAR scientific community. The Visualization Lab staff support large-scale data analysis and visualization activities, education and outreach programs, and collaborative technologies. The 1,000-square-foot facility is equipped with a wide-format, high-resolution stereo projection system that is used as the main display for meetings, videoconferencs, AccessGrid sessions, visualization development, and theater-style presentations. Activities in the Vislab span the development and delivery of software tools for analysis and visualization, the implementation of advanced visualization and collaboration environments, and the support of a sizable outreach program, providing dozens of presentations to student, governmental, and scientific audiences.

The Vislab's collaboration technologies and the visualization material contribute to NCAR's strategic goal of "Cultivating a scientifically literate and engaged citizenry and a diverse and creative workforce," and NCAR's strategic priority of "Engaging a broader and more diverse community" in the atmospheric and geosciences. Public awareness and understanding of atmospheric and related sciences are facilitated through media-rich demonstrations of 3D visualizations and presentations to K-12 audiences as well as scientific, corporate, and government visitors. High-impact media projects, such as major film and television documentaries, are also supported in the Vislab, and animations developed in there are used in the documentaries or as backdrops during film interviews of NCAR's scientific staff. These outreach efforts involving the national and international media bring the importance and societal relevance of our science to broad segments of the public. The Vislab is also used to maintain an innovative workplace and to provide an advanced technical infrastructure that enhances productivity and reflects our environmental values. Vislab staff support and maintain an Access Grid group collaboration environment, helping to enhance communication and to minimize the need for travel between campuses as well as between geographically disributed teams collaborating on cross-institutional projects.

In FY 2006, the Vislab staff continued its successful partnership with the Public Visitor Program and supported approximately 144 demos, video conferences, and general meetings involving over 1,700 participants (a 30% increase from last year). These events included presentations to K-12 audiences, corporate and scientific visitors, government officials, and visiting dignitaries including visitors from the Pentagon, the National Science Board, the Korean Meteorological Agency, the National Fire Protection Association, and Queen Noor of Jordan, to name a few. The CISL Vislab also continued its important role as an outreach liaison with film and television organizations by providing a venue for television interviews with NCAR staff and by developing digital media that was used in productions by the Weather Channel, HBO, NBC News, the BBC, and many others. The Vislab staff were honored for these ongoing outreach efforts that promote NCAR research and science education and received a UCAR Education and Outreach Outstanding Accomplishment Award.

The CISL Vislab plans to continue its productive partnership with the Public Visitor Program in FY 2007 as well as its activities with the media to provide engaging visualization material that can be used to help educate the public about environmental and scientific issues. We will continue to provide Access Grid capabilities with an ongoing emphasis on integrating new technologies and techniques that facilitate enhanced group collaboration. The Vislab increasingly hosts groups that are very interested in our technology development efforts, and in FY 2007 we will continue work begun in FY 2006 to develop a new collection of compelling media that helps to communicate the Earth System Knowledge Environment message. We also intend to investigate new software tools that have the potential to enhance and choreograph presentations and effects for Vislab presentations.

This project is supported by NSF Core funding.