Tuesday, 4:15PM - 5:55 PM
Meet the Scientists

Organizer:	Kwan-Liu Ma, University of California, Davis
Panelists:	John Blondin, NC State University
	Jacqueline H. Chen, Sandia National Laboratories
	Mark Rast, University of Colorado at Boulder
	Ravi Samtaney, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory

Scientific visualization has become an active area of research. Most researchers and students in the field of visualization, however, do not have access to data sets generated by the state-of-the-art simulations. In the case they have access to some of these data sets, they often do not get to directly interact with the scientists who generated the data sets. This interaction is crucial for obtaining the understanding of what scientists really need to get out of their data sets and what visualization functionalities are missing in existing visualization software tools. This panel will provide such interaction. Through the DOE SciDAC Institute for Ultrascale Visualization (Ultravis Institute), scientists in representative areas from combustion, astrophysics, to plasma physics will be sponsored to attend the Visualization 2007 Conference and participate in the panel. Each scientist will describe his/her application, data sets, and the corresponding visualization challenges, and then answer questions. By making their data sets openly available through the Ultravis Institute after the Conference, more visualization researchers will be given the chance to work on the problems truly faced by the scientists. The proposed panel will provide these researchers the correct understanding of the problems, and subsequently help accelerate the development of the field of scientific visualization.

Wednesday, 10:30AM - 12:10PM
"Though this be madness, yet there is method in it":
The Importance Of Mathematical Concepts Beneath Contemporary Visualization.

Organizers:	Rita Borgo, School of Computing, University of Leeds
	David Duke, School of Computing, University of Leeds
Panelists:	David Banks, UT/ORNL Joint Institute for Computational Sciences
	Hamish Carr, University College Dublin
	Roger Crawfis, Ohio State University
	Tamara Munzner, University of British Columbia
	Valerio Pascucci, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Visualization occupies an important role in the pursuit of knowledge as the understanding of real world phenomena. However, behind the image are mathematical models of the world and its representation.

At a time when questions about the very core of the discipline, e.g. the relationship between information and scientific visualization, are being raised almost annually within the conference, it seems particular germane to stand back and review what is ultimately what could be the most abstract and neutral picture of visualization itself - the mathematics world which ties together the notion of data and transformation.

The panel will involve lively discussion and debate on the kinds of mathematics applicable to visualization and the means by which maths is brought into the discipline. After summarizing the 'case for the defence', members of the panel will be cross-examined by the audience on whether their own work is the madness of genius, or the product of mathematical methods. The deeper question, however, is whether a mathematical civilization beats at the heart of the visualization community.

Wednesday, 2:00PM - 3:40PM
"All Visualization Software is Basically the Same, Right?"
Comparing Commercial and Academic Visualization Software -- from Requirements, to the Development Process, to Intellectual Property

Organizer:	David Weinstein: Chief Technology Officer, Numira Biosciences
Panelists:	Randall Frank: Senior Developer, CEI
	Will Schroeder: President, Kitware
	Scott Senften: Senior Technical Advisor, Landmark/Halliburton
	Karel Zuiderveld: Director of Core Technologies, Vital Images

The terrain is quickly shifting in the field of visualization: both on the commercial front, where visualization software is becoming a commodity tool; and on the academic front, where universities are increasingly focused on software patents and licensing fees. And as the situation on each of these fronts continues to evolve, the landscape at their intersection is increasingly filled with tremendous potential, but also dangerous land-mines.

How do software engineering practices differ across academia and industry? When companies and Universities work together, is the result a win-win? How does Open Source software fit into all of this? What additional roles can the Vis conference play in bringing academia and industry together?

For this panel, we've gathered together highly technical representatives from a top-tier group of visualization companies. The panelists will provide some perspective on the similarities and differences between commercial and academic visualization software, and they will discuss how their intersection might evolve in the coming years.

Thursday, 10:30AM - 12:10PM
Getting Human-Centered Computing and Scientific Visualization Married: the Myth and Critical Issues

Organizer:	Jian Chen, Brown University
Panelists:	Jian Chen, Brown University
	Victoria Interrante, University of Minnesota
	David Laidlaw, Brown University
	William Ribarsky, Charlotte Visualization Center

The power of scientific visualization is to represent data as graphic images that humans can understand, allowing users to execute their real-world tasks effectively. As visualization techniques become more mature, researchers have begun to tackle the human side of visualization (i.e., to study how people make use of different visualization approaches and how to build more useful and usable visualization systems). Human-centered computing (HCC) can address such concerns in many dimensions. For example, theories in cognition and perception can articulate visualization design rationales. Design methods aspire to provide frameworks ranging from low-level behavior studies to high-level task-analysis and usability evaluation. Although we are seeing great interest in the marriage of human- centered computing and visualization, the guidance for doing so is very limited. This panel brings together diverse researchers across the human-centered computing and visualization spectrum to discuss their research, to reach beyond their own fields, and to understand the marriage of HCC and scientific visualization for future collaborations.