[Esip-viz] Workshop on Visualization Technologies

[Joseph JaJa]

Call for Workshop Participation

Visualization Technologies to Support Research on Human – Environment Interactions

Who should apply:  Social scientists, natural scientists, computational scientists,and humanities scholars who need to visualize spatial data as they solve research problems

July 23-24, 2012
National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center
Annapolis, Maryland.


The National Socio-Environmental Synthesis (SESYNC) center is the newest national synthesis center funded by the National Science Foundation,with the main vision to foster synthetic, actionable science related to the structure, functioning, and sustainability of socio-environmental systems.  The center supports research on diverse aspects related to the linkage between humans, societies, and the environment but is particularly encouraging work on the social dimensions of environmental change and environmental sustainability.   

One of SESYNC’s strategic goals is to foster the development of computational tools and services in support of researchers including scholars studying human-environment interactions.

SESYNC is hosting this workshopto focusespecially on the visualization and use of spatial datasets from the social and environmental sciences.  The workshop willdiscuss and identify some of the current visualization challenges and emerging opportunities in using spatial datasets to study human-environment interactions.  We expect the meeting to be a ‘problem-solving’ workshop wherein domain scientists from the social and environmental sciences can learn about visualization tools and resources available for their work and computational scientists can learn about  the as-yet unmet visualization needs in the domain sciences.

More specifically, the workshop will bring computational and domain scientists together to: (i)discuss some of the visualization challengesassociated with using spatio-temporal datasets; (ii)recommend possible collaborative IT efforts that could be supported under the SESYNC’s programs or through other funding mechanisms; and (iii) set up a network of researchers to interact on a regular basis, share information, and exchange ideas about the priorities identified during the workshop.


The following keynote speakers have already agreed to participate in the workshop:

•	Dr. Daniel Aliaga, Computer Graphics and Visualization Lab, Department of Computer Science, Purdue University(http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/aliaga)

•	Dr. Stephen Sheppard, Director of Collaborative for Advanced Landscape Planning, Department of Forest Resources Management/Landscape Architecture, University of British Columbia(http://www.calp.forestry.ubc.ca/people/stephen/)

•	Dr. Ben Shneiderman, Human-Computer Interaction Lab, Department of Computer Science and the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, University of Maryland(http://www.cs.umd.edu/~ben)


SESYNC invites interested computational and domain scientists to submit abstracts (at most one page) related to the main goals of this workshop.  Abstracts will be reviewed by a SESYNC Committee and a subset will be invited to participate in the workshop, subject to meeting capacity.

Travel expenses of the lead authors of accepted abstracts will be covered by SESYNC.

A small subset of the accepted abstracts will be invited for oral presentations while the rest will have poster presentations during the afternoon of the first day of the workshop. 

Please submit your abstract in PDF format byApril 20, 2012to:
cyber-workshop.application at sesync.org