This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
Visualization is increasingly essential for some forms of scientific and engineering research, particularly to explore change over time, or to examine complex interactions in models. While most scientific visualization occurs in two dimensions, selective use of three dimensional immersive technology for modeling and simulation projects is proposed by Drs. Joiner, Chang and Morreale at Kean University in collaboration with Dr. Manson of the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. The specific research projects include topics in biochemistry, environmental studies, biology, meteorology, applied mathematics, psychology and computer science. There is a strong STEM education component to the proposed activities since Kean and Stockton are first and foremost, teaching universities. Nearly half of Kean's undergraduate population is minority and both schools have a significant percent of their student population who are first generation college students. The award from NSF's Office of Cyberinfrastructure supports acquisition of advanced scientific visualization tools, with Kean receiving the most significant grant.
Intellectual Merit The purpose of this project was to acquire visualization hardware for research and teaching at Kean University and the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, and to formalize and foster a collaborative partnership between the computational math program at Kean University and Stockon title the New Jersey Institute for Modeling and Visualization. Hardware purchased under this grant included a 3-wall virtual reality "CAVE" located at Kean and a immersive GeoDome theater located at Stockton. The CAVE provides an enabling technology, allowing faculty working on a variety of projects the ability to visualize data and interact with their data differently than with a typical computer screen, through the incorporation of head tracking and stereo (3D) projection. This has been incorporated into research by multiple faculty-student teams at Kean, including visualization of molecules in drug discovery, creation of coursework for virtual reality, human interface design, data glove technology, data mining of wireless sensor networks, and non-linear stochastic optimization. Broader Impact The NJIMV has held workshops annually at Kean and Stockton throughout the grant period, with a special focus on the use of visualization. Approximately 25 faculty per year were trained in the use of scientific visualization, particularly in the classroom, for the years 2010, 2011, and 2012. Visualization workshops were funded by the National Computational Science Institute. Additional 1-day workshops funded by NJ-EDGE were also held during the grant period. Additionally, the CAVE was incorporated into a variety of outreach offerings for high school teachers, including Kean's Google CS4HS workshop in 2011.
