Invited Speaker Session: Visualization at the Bleeding Edge of Science

Summary: Visualization is the process of transforming the complex into what can be seen. It began with the use of illustrations and drawings and has evolved to include interactive real-time digital imagery coupled with analytics and reasoning. We use visualization as a means of tapping into the highest bandwidth channel in our brain, exploiting the innate power of our visual cortex, the workhorse that drives the understanding of society's most complex problems. In tandem with the growth and evolution of visualization methods, science and engineering disciplines using visualization as a ubiquitous and integral piece of the problem solving process have seen exponential growth. As we tackle larger and more complex problems, visualization is increasingly more critical. At the bleeding edge of science, visualization holds the key to unlocking the information locked inside what is undoubtedly insurmountable amounts of data. In this talk, Dr. Kelly Gaither will discuss why visualization is such a powerful tool for understanding the complex. She will demonstrate this by looking at grand challenge problems at the intersection of basic science and medicine. Dr. Gaither will illustrate the impact that visualization has at the bleeding edge, and the promise it holds for impact in our future's most challenging problems.

Author(s): Kelly Gaither, Senior Research Scientist at Texas Advanced Computing Center, Associate Professor in Women's Health Dell Medical School, The University of Texas at Austin
Kelly Gaither is a Senior Research Scientist and the interim Director of Education and Outreach at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) and an Associate Professor in the Department of Women's Health at the Dell Medical School at The University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Gaither conducts research in applications visualization, visual analytics and augmented/virtual reality. She received her doctoral degree in Computational Engineering from Mississippi State University in May, 2000, and received her masters and bachelors degree in Computer Science from Texas A&M University in 1992 and 1988 respectively. Gaither has over thirty refereed publications in fields ranging from Computatational Mechanics to Supercomputing Applications to Scientific Visualization. She is currently a co-PI and the Director of Community Engagement and Enrichment and for Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE2), a $120M project funded by the National Science Foundation. She has given a number of invited talks and keynotes. Over the past ten years, she has actively participated in conferences related to her field, most notably acting as general chair IEEE Visualization 2004 and general chair of XSEDE16.

Speaker(s): Kelly Gaither, Senior Research Scientist at Texas Advanced Computing Center, Associate Professor in Women's Health Dell Medical School, The University of Texas at Austin