This is funding to support a Doctoral Colloquium (workshop) of promising doctoral students and distinguished research faculty, to be held in conjunction with this year's IEEE VisWeek meeting, which will take place during the week of October 24-29, 2010, in Salt Lake City. Visualization, or the use of interactive graphics to support data analysis and understanding, has become an integral part and critical component of many application areas. VisWeek consists of three main events: IEEE Visualization (Vis), IEEE Information Visualization (InfoVis), and the IEEE Visual Analytics Science and Technology Symposium (VAST). IEEE Vis is the oldest of the three venues of VisWeek, and will celebrate its 21st anniversary this year; its traditional focus has been on a wide range of topics in scientific and medical visualization. InfoVis centers around helping people explore or explain abstract data through interactive software that exploits the capabilities of the human perceptual system, focusing on cognitively useful spatial mappings of abstract datasets that are not inherently spatial, and accompanying the mappings with interaction techniques that allow people to intuitively explore the data. VAST, the youngest event, was founded in 2006 to address the growing interest in the science of analytical reasoning supported by highly interactive visual interfaces; its focus is on visual analytics tools and techniques to synthesize information into knowledge, derive insight from massive, dynamic, and often conflicting data; detect the expected and discover the unexpected, provide timely, defensible, and understandable assessments, and communicate assessments effectively for action. IEEE VisWeek is the premier forum for visualization advances in science and engineering for academia, government, and industry, bringing together about 800 researchers and practitioners from around the world with a shared interest in techniques, tools, and technology. The papers published in the special conference issue of IEEE Transactions of Visualization and Computer Graphics are rigorously refereed and widely cited.
The Doctoral Colloquium at IEEE VisWeek is a research-focused meeting of a group of selected proposal-stage Ph.D. candidates and a panel of distinguished research faculty. It has taken place annually at the Visualization conference since 2006, and has helped launch the careers of a number of outstanding young Vis researchers. In 2010 the workshop will bring together approximately 12 doctoral students, from the United States and abroad, who will convene on Sunday, October 24, for a day of discussions and interaction with about 10 faculty researchers, with follow-up events that will take place during the VisWeek technical program. A primary goal of the Doctoral Colloquium is to allow students to discuss their research directions in a supportive atmosphere with a panel of distinguished leaders and with their peers, who will provide helpful feedback and fresh perspectives. The workshop supports community building, by connecting beginning and advanced researchers, one of the objectives being to build a cohort group of new researchers who will then have a network of colleagues across the world. Student research will be disseminated via posters during the VisWeek technical program, and via publication in the VisWeek Extended Abstracts. Feedback about the Doctoral Colloquium will be provided to future conference committees. The PI has affirmed that in managing this event he and his colleagues will try explicitly to identify and include the broadest possible group of highly qualified participants, and they will ensure that NSF funds are used chiefly to support participation by students enrolled in graduate programs in the United States.
Broader Impacts: The VisWeek Doctoral Colloquium has taken place annually since 2006, and has helped launch the careers of a number of outstanding young Vis researchers. It brings together the best of the next generation of visualization researchers, and allows them to create a social network both among themselves and with senior researchers, which plays a major role in their enculturation into the profession. Since the students and faculty are a diverse group on several dimensions (nationality, scientific discipline, research specialization), the students' horizons are broadened at a critical stage in their professional development.
The goal of the colloquium was to allow students a chance to discuss their research directions in a supportive atmosphere with a panel of distinguished leaders and with their peers. Students received helpful feedback and fresh perspectives on their research topics and possible career paths, and had the opportunity to interact closely with expert researchers in their field. The Colloquium goals were: To build a cohort group of new researchers who will then have a network of colleagues across the world. To guide the work of the new researchers by having senior experts in the research field coach them and give advice. To provide encouragement and support for the selection of visualization research topics and research methods. To make attending their research conference more accessible to new entrants into the field, so that they may become more integrated into the research community. To illustrate the interrelationship and diversity of visualization research. To allow new entrants an experience at the VisWeek conference that was an enjoyable and rewarding experience, subsequently encouraging them to return and submit papers, panels, demonstrations, posters, etc. to the conference in future years Findings: During the day of the Colloquium, each student made a formal presentation about his or her doctoral research. Feedback was given by members of the faculty panel, especially as well as by the other student participants. Discussion was encouraged and quite rich. Each student participant also received feedback from faculty panel members in one-on-one discussions. The feedback was geared to help the student participants understand and articulate how their work is positioned relative to other visualization research, whether their topics are adequately focused for thesis research projects, whether their methods are correctly chosen and applied, whether their results are being appropriately analyzed and presented, etc. During the technical program of the conference, the student participants presented their work to the larger community as posters. There are two special events during the technical program that put a spotlight on the posters. One was a "Highlight on Posters" coffee break. The other was a Students' Poster Session. During these sessions, the student participants were physically present at their posters to discuss their work with interested attendees. The posters were also available for viewing during the entire five days of the technical program. A two-page extended abstract of each Colloquium participant's dissertation research was published in the VisWeek 2010 Extended Abstracts, which was distributed to all conference registrants, mailed to certain categories of IEEE members, sold after the conference by IEEE, and included in both the IEEE-sponsored, on-line VisWeek Bibliography and the IEEE Digital Library. Thus, the student participants' work is disseminated to a far larger audience than the VisWeek conference attendees. Dissemination of results Student research was disseminated via posters during the VisWeek 2010 technical program and via extended abstracts published in the VisWeek 2010 Extended Abstracts Training and Development: Students were exposed to presenting their findings/data/projects to senior members of the visualization community. Additionally, students were given feedback on the work and presentation from by members of the faculty panel, as well as by the other student participants.Each student also received feedback from faculty panel members in a one-on-one setting. The feedback helps educate the students in better articulating how their work is positioned relative to other Visualization research, whether their topics are adequately focused for thesis research projects, whether their methods are correctly chosen and applied, whether their results are being appropriately analyzed and presented, etc. Feedback also helps the students understand the positioning of their research within the visualization community. During the technical program of the conference, the student participants presented their work to the larger community as posters. The work of these exceptional students was showcased for VisWeek conference attendees, and the students had the opportunity to get feedback from a large audience.
