News

April 22, 2009 - UC Davis Genome Center installs HIPerSpace Technology
The Genome Center at the University of California Davis (UCD), has installed a 4x3 (12 tile) display wall adopting our HIPerSpace technology and its CGLX software stack. This newly deployed OptIPortal delivers a combined 48 megapixels worth of display real-estate that will be used by faculty, researchers and students in the UCD Bioinformatics Core. ([Read More])

April 17, 2009 - 'Cosmic Tree of Life' on HIPerSpace Wall
The closest that artist Roger Ferragallo has come to displaying the full dimensions of his "Cosmic Tree of Life" digital painting was when he got the chance to display the latest version (2.0) of the art work on Calit2's HIPerSpace tiled display wall at UC San Diego recently. The digital painting measures 556 million pixels, and it was displayed on HIPerSpace's native 287 million pixelsl. If ever "Cosmic Tree of Life" is printed out in its current incarnation, the painting would measure 25 x 15 feet, so HIPerSpace permitted Ferragallo to see the full scope of his work on the tiled display system which measures 31.8 x 7.9 feet. In a video posted on YouTube, Ferragallo talks about displaying and interacting with his work on the HIPerSpace wall. "Cosmic Tree of Life" is also being exhibited online and interactively at GigaPan.com, a project by Carnegie Mellon University with partners, Google Earth, NASA Ames and National Geographic, for displaying panoramic images online. (Read More)

March 3, 2009 - Coastal Bluff Imaging Study Featured in SIO Explorations
Researchers from UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Jacob School of Engineering are studying California's coastline to understand how sand from sea cliffs contributes to San Diego's world-famous beaches. "This is the one we have been waiting for," said Scripps researcher Liz Johnstone after arriving at a bluff section at Flat Rock, a popular area for beachgoers at Torrey Pines State Park, that collapsed in September 2008. A 75-foot section of unstable bluff dumped 1,000 tons of sand onto the beach below in the collapse. The section that came tumbling down was from a 45- to 48-million-year old sandstone formation and was one of several collapses along that same stretch of beach in the state park. (Read More)

January 9, 2009 - DOE Awards Supercomputing Grant for Extreme Visualization of Cultural Patterns
High-performance computing and the humanities are connecting at the University of California, San Diego - with a little matchmaking help from the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Visual arts professor Lev Manovich talks about the cultural analytics project, and why Calit2's HIPerSpace ultra-high-resolution display wall is part of the research project. The two agencies have awarded 330,000 hours of time on DOE supercomputers to UC San Diego’s Software Studies Initiative (softwarestudies.com) to explore the full potential of cultural analytics in a project on “Visualizing Patterns in Databases of Cultural Images and Video.” The grant is one of three inaugural awards from a new Humanities High Performance Computing Program established jointly by DOE and NEH. (Read More)

April 22, 2008 - Our research about the Search for the Lost Leonardo is featured on CBS 60 Minutes
The most-watched news program on American television showcased the work of Calit2 researcher Maurizio Seracini in its April 20 edition. In a segment called "The Lost Leonardo", correspondent Morley Safer recounted the UC San Diego researcher's 33-year-old quest to locate the long-lost Leonardo da Vinci mural, "The Battle of Anghiari" - a search to solve what CBS termed one of the most enduring mysteries of the art world (Video). (Read More)

Match 10, 2008 - The National Geographic Society and the City Florence team up in support of the DaVinci Project
The UC San Diego-based center that is leading the scientific search for a long-lost Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece has a new partner in the effort: the venerable National Geographic Society. The city of Florence announced this week a five-year agreement with the Society to explore the history and culture of Florence in the pages of National Geographic magazine and books, and the National Geographic Channel on TV. The initial collaboration brings National Geographic into the search for the Battle of Anghiari, a mural painted by da Vinci that disappeared nearly 500 years ago, but is believed to exist behind a brick wall and fresco in the Palazzo Vecchio. (Read More)

January 11, 2008 - UC San Diego Researchers Acquire Data on Renaissance Landmark in Search for da Vinci Mural
When most tourists visit Florence's famed Palazzo Vecchio, they are ushered off the premises in early evening. But for UCSD graduate students Michael Olsen and Daniel Knoblauch, the museum's closing time was when their real work began. Together with professor Falko Kuester, they spent nearly three weeks in November and December scanning the interior of the historic building's stately Hall of the 500, mostly in the dark. "It was a great opportunity to work in an area where important Renaissance artists worked and so much history happened." (Read More)

August 8, 2006 - Professor Kuester gives invited talk at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC)
Professor Kuester talks about "Massive Data Visualization using Extreme-Scale Visualization Systems" in the Scientific Computing Track at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC). The talk goes over the motivation, technical needs and research contributions of HIPerWall, as system that he invented in 2003 and that him and his team have been developing since. The talk is available through the iTunes session videos. (Read More)

April 16, 2006 - HIPerWall: New Vistas in Scientific Visualization (Apple profiles our HIPerWall research)
As advanced computer and imaging technologies generate more and larger data sets, the capacity to visualize and interpret that data becomes problematic. To promote new scientific visualization research, the National Science Foundation provided Major Research Instrument funding to develop the HIPerWall visualization system. At 200 megapixels, HIPerWall provides twice the resolution of any other display in the world and approximately ten times the resolution of typical tiled displays. (Read More)