UCSC Review Winter 1998

Campus Update: NSF awards $460,000 for visualization work

UCSC scientists soon will create powerful and informative graphical images from their data at a new interdisciplinary laboratory, thanks to a $460,000 equipment grant from the National Science Foundation.

The Natural Sciences Division willmatch the federal grant with about ,$240,000 in funding and equipment,making the new lab worth about $700,000.

Today's complex scientific researchmakes visualization an essential tool. This is true especially for researchers who explore variations over a complex surface or within a volume of space. Large sets of numbers, in and of themselves, can reveal some useful knowledge. But when a scientist sees the data--with help from colors, shading, vectors, and other visual aids--crucial insights often emerge much more strikingly.

"This grant enables us to put together a state-of-the-art visualization facility that wouldn't other-wise be possible," said project director Jane Wilhelms, associate professor of computer science and an expert in computer graphics.