Shared Scholarly Work

In the Visualization Portal and Modeling Lab, scholars and professional information technology staff join together to create production-quality tools that can be used to further research and exploration. Academic Technology Services created the Research Scholar and Intern programs to steer and support the work of graduate students within the Visualization Portal, 3-D Modeling Lab, Technology Sandbox and Sound Lab. The Research Scholar Program is specifically aimed at developing applications that can be used across disciplines, while the Intern Program focuses on giving graduate students the opportunity to work on a variety of modeling, visualization and sound projects.

ATS provides the technology infrastructure and programming support for these projects.The Experiential Technologies Center (ETC) oversees projects involving modeling and historic reconstructions. The Institute for Digital Research and Education (IDRE) oversees projects in scientific visualization and computational simulation. Through partnerships with these campus centers and institutes, we are able to assure that projects can be successful and maintain a high degree of scholarly integrity.

Research Scholar Program

The Research Scholar program links a graduate student and a professor with appropriate facility resources and information technology expertise provided by ATS consultants. These projects have the dual benefit of pushing research in discipline-specific areas and also of creating new information technology tools that can be used across disciplines. The applications created within this program form a “toolbox” that is available to UCLA researchers and faculty.

Toolbox development involves the creation, development, documentation, and distribution of production-level, open-sourced software for specialized needs based on research initiatives. The tools developed for specific projects can be re-tasked to further research and exploration in other areas across campus.

Three projects illustrate the kinds of information technology tools that can be used across disciplines are:

• vrNav: An application that allows users to navigate through the three-dimensional models and experience temporal and environmental effects in real time, vrNav is the production-level application used for nearly all real-time presentations, performance and research at ATS. vrNav is an open-source project whose primary developers are ATS and CVRLab staff.
• Sound Server/Sonification Tools: Research into sound technology involves two major components - development of a sound server for virtual reality and performance applications and development of tools for the representation of scientific data through sound and music.
• OpenMash: A group of open source programs that transmit broadcast-quality video and audio from one place on the Internet to another, OpenMash can be used in a variety of science and humanities projects. Used initially for a distance education language course, OpenMash was also used for distributed performance and as an Internet2 demonstration of a teaching tool that linked medical students into an operating room.

The goal of such toolbox development is to adapt experiential technology developed at UCLA, bring it to production viability, and help others to find ways to use the tools for their specific research needs.

While much of this work is developed and used within the Visualization Portal and 3-D Modeling Lab, the Technology Sandbox also plays a significant role. The Sandbox is a collaborative, technology piloting and prototyping lab for research and instructional technologies. It is both a physical space and an organizational structure that brings together a community of technology professionals from across campus to work on problems and projects that help fulfill UCLA’s mission of research and instruction.

See Research Activities for other interesting applications developed through the Visualization Portal and Technology Sandbox

Intern Program

Iinterns have worked on historical architectural models of sites such as Santiago de Compostela and the Roman Forum. Other projects include creating a model of the Great Wall of Los Angeles and a project to train theater lighting designers. Some of the interesting projects that were made possible through the intern program are described below.

Great Wall of Los Angeles

The Great Wall model was created for display in the Portal by a team that included UCLA interns and 3-D Modeling Lab staff. Working with Modeling Lab Coordinator Bruce McCrimmon the interns learned to use computer applications – Maya and MultiGen Creator - to create a virtual version of UCLA Professor Judy Baca’s “Great Wall of Los Angeles.” The half-mile long mural documents the Los Angeles basin’s ethic history.

The benefit of this project was two-fold. First, the interns learned how to build and interactive, real-time model. Second, the model is used by Professor Baca for instruction, fund-raising, and to plan additions to the mural.

Real-Time Lighting Application

This application was developed through an intern project and in conjunction with Theater, Film and Television. Intern Erich Keil worked with Visualization Portal Development Coordinator Joan Slottow to develop a 3D Studio Max-based plug-in to be used for computer-aided lighting design. This application includes a component of vrNav – the main program used in the Visualization Portal to navigate through virtual reality models. The application allows lighting changes to take effect as the model is navigated. The tool allows the designer to examine the effects of the lights as they change.

Erich will use his 3-D Studio Max plug-in to incorporate lights into the Curia model, one of the buildings in the Roman Forum.

Dissertations in the Portal

In the past two years, seven people have used the Visualization Portal and Modeling Lab in the process of getting their dissertations. Two graduates students are currently using the Portal to further their work on dissertations. Abdul-mattaleb al-Ballam, who has just earned his Ph.D. in Architecture and has returned to the University of Kuwait as a professor, says that the Portal was partly responsible for getting three years of work done in one year.

Scott Friedman
Computer Science (2004)
Title: The Pixelcluster: Real-time Visualization Using a Cluster of Commodity Workstations

Abdul Ballam
Architecture (2004)
Subject: Urban Evolution and the Effects on the Lebanese City of Baalbek

Lisa Snyder
Architecture (2003)
Title: The design and use of experiential instructional technology for the teaching of architectural history in American undergraduate architecture programs.

David Beaudry
Clarinet Performance (2002)
Title: Tango Electrónica: Searching for New Dialogues in Live Acoustic Performance

Darren Lee
Computer Science (2001)
Title: Path Line Decomposition for Visualizing 3-D Unsteady Vector Fields

John Kil
Physiological Science (2001)
Title: Scroll Wave Dynamics in a Three-Dimensional Cardiac Tissue Model: Roles of Restitution, Thickness and Fiber Rotation

Jessica Theodor
Organismic Biology, Ecology and Evolution (2001)
Subject: Evolution of Ungulates and Grasslands During the Miocene Epoch

Rebeka Vital
Architecture
In Progress

Dean Abernathy
Architecture
In Progress