The IEEE VAST 2010 Challenge continues in the footsteps of the IEEE VAST 2009 Challenge with the purpose of pushing the forefront of visual analytics tools using benchmark data sets and establishing a forum to advance visual analytics evaluation methods. We also hope it will speed the transfer of VA technology from research labs to commercial products, and increase the availability of evaluation techniques.

In order to provide more opportunities for increased participation we offer an overall Grand Challenge as well as several smaller Mini Challenges. Teams may enter one or more Mini Challenges independently of the entering the Grand Challenge. ALL teams submitting an entry to a IEEE VAST Challenge will be invited to discuss their work during the VAST Challenge Participant Workshop, before the conference. Entries will be judged on both the correctness of the analysis (based on the availability of ground truth) and the utility of the tools in conducting the analysis. Participants have several months to prepare their submissions. All submitted materials will be published in the Visual Analytics Benchmark Repository

For more information plese visit http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/VASTchallenge2010/.

Georges Grinstein, University of Massachusetts, Lowell
Catherine Plaisant, University of Maryland
Jean Scholtz, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Mark Whiting, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory