The Program organized a two-day workshop in Braga, inviting experts to discuss the latest topics and trends in data visualization.
Data has become a core asset for organizations. However, to unlock the real potential of data, organizations need to understand the very best ways to analyse and work it. It’s more than owning or having access to large amounts of data; it’s about using it to create new knowledge for the benefit of organizations, society and economy. And as the volume of available data keeps growing, the benefits of visualization become increasingly relevant. Thus, access to high-performance computing can be seen a major benefit in the logic of innovation and competitiveness and advanced visualisation techniques can make a significant contribution to tap into the value of data.
The goal of this 2-half day workshop, held at IB-S and MACC facilities, in the University of Minho between June 7 and June 8, was to raise awareness among Portuguese researchers across all scientific domains about the advantages of Scientific Visualization and Info Visualization, as well as to shed light on some of the most advanced data visualization techniques. The event brought together experts from Portugal, US, Norway and Japan and attracted 25 participants from seven organizations.
Hosted by Luís Paulo Santos, Assistant Professor at the School of Engineering from the University of Minho, the 1stday of the Applied Visualization workshop included talks from Paul Navrátil, Director of Visualization at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC); Jan Byska, Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Bergen and Assistant Professor at Masaryk University, and Carla Silva, Researcher and Ph.D. student at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Porto.
Attendees were introduced to different applications of data visualization, such as ray tracing, biochemistry and traffic analyses.
The second day of the workshop was dedicated to ‘SAGE-2’, a software platform used to manage and share display walls. Jason Haga, Senior Researcher at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), was the invited speaker. After introducing the audience to Scalable Resolution Shared Display (SRSD) environments, Haga delivered a hands-on training on SAGE2 enabled visualization environments, which allowed participants to develop a better understanding of how to use SRSD and take advantage of these environments for data intensive science. The session was held at Vizlab, a visualization room recently setup at MACC, that includes a 4×3 100M pixels display wall for remote and local rendering.
The workshop’s theme and goals are aligned with Portugal’s recently announced 2030 strategy for Advanced Computing. Nuno Feixa Rodrigues, Member of FCTs Board of Directors, opened day 2 with an overview presentation of the country’s strategy to place Portugal among Europe’s front-runners in the area of Advanced Computing.
See short videos on Data Visualization here.
See the Photo Gallery bellow.
