The Graphics and Visualization Center, founded in 1991, is one of 24 National Science Foundation Science and Technology Centers created to pursue foundational interdisciplinary research. The primary goals of our Center are to build a stronger scientific foundation for computer graphics and scientific visualization and to help create the basic framework for future interactive graphical environments.

The Center comprises five universities: Brown, Caltech, Cornell, UNC, and Utah. This website:

The resources include:

• information on the research, education, outreach, and telecollaboration activities of the Center .
  
  
• comprehensive bibliogragraphies and project descriptions.

Research Areas

The Center pursues research in four main areas of computer graphics: modeling, rendering, user interfaces and high-performance architectures. Two driving application areas help direct this research: scientific visualization and telecollaboration in virtual environments. Center researchers are currently developing new rendering algorithms based on the physics of light, new physically-based models, sophisticated mathematics for 3D surface definition, new parallel display architectures, easier-to-use 3D user interfaces for individual and collaborative work on the desktop and in virtual environments, and new techniques for scientific visualization.

Multi-Site Collaboration

The challenge posed by multi-site collaboration (see sites below) has led the Graphics and Visualization Center to explore emerging communications technologies. A dedicated high-bandwidth (T-1 capacity) televideo communications infrastructure furnishes simultaneous interactive video and data exchange on demand, providing a testing ground for a geographically distributed "laboratory without walls."

The televideo system is used for research, administration, and for the Center's education and outreach activities which include a five-way graduate televideo seminar involving students and faculty from all the sites. The Center also offers scholarships for women and minority graduate students, numerous undergraduate research opportunities, summer programs for high school students and teachers, a summer program for 8th grade girls, curriculum development efforts, and numerous single and half-day events (including tours of the Center's labs).

Programs for Underrepresented Groups

Throughout the Center, from K-12 outreach to undergraduate education to graduate programs and beyond, we are taking actions aimed at bringing underrepresented groups such as women and minorities into the field.

• The Artemis Project
• The Bridge Course
• Cornell Summer Session for Design Professions (Pre-Freshman program)
• Minority Teachers Computational Sciences and Graphics Awareness Program at Caltech
• Minority Youth Program
• Undergraduate Research Access
• The Utah ACCESS Program
• Women's Televideo Roundtables
• Minority Roundtables

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