SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING AND IMAGING INSTITUTE
at the University of Utah

An internationally recognized leader in visualization, scientific computing, and image analysis

Martin Berzins Appointed Chair of the DOE ASCAC

Congratulations to Martin Berzins on being appointed Chair of the Department of Energy (DOE) Advanced Scientific Computing Advisory Committee (ASCAC).

ASCAC reports to the Director, DOE Office of Science provides advice and recommendations on scientific, technical, and programmatic issues relating to the Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) Program.

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SCI Mourns the Passing of Alumnus, Colleague, and Friend Steve Parker

Steve Parker passed away due to complications from brain cancer on May 2.  Steve was one of the inaugural graduate students who formed the SCI research group in 1994.

That year, he published his first paper on the SCIRun problem solving environment, which continues to have scientific impact 30 years later (https://www.sci.utah.edu/software/scirun.html).  While writing his dissertation, Steve worked on a side research project on parallel ray tracing that would pave the way for a series of research innovations, the establishment of the Center for Interactive Ray-Tracing and Photo Realistic Visualization, and the start-up company Ray Scale.  Steve defended his PhD in 1999 and soon after became our colleague as a SCI Institute Faculty member and an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Utah. In 2008, Steve joined NVIDIA as the Director for High Performance Computing and Computational Graphics and in 2014 became the Vice President for Professional Graphics.

Steve was a profound innovator, a remarkable student, and a wonderful colleague and friend.  He was one of the smartest, nicest, and kindest person anyone could know.  We will miss him greatly.

We offer our sincere condolences to Steve’s family and many friends.

You can find a list of Steve’s publications here: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=J7N6-AgAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao

National Academy of Sciences Names Tamara Bidone a 2024 Kavli Fellow

Assistant Professor Tamara Bidone, Ph.D. has been named a 2024 National Academy of Sciences Kavli Fellow and was recently honored at the Kavli Frontiers of Science symposia on March 7-9th in Irvine, California. 

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Manish Parashar Wins the 2024 CRA Distinguished Service Award

By Matt Hazenbush, Director of Communications

The Computing Research Association (CRA) has selected Dr. Manish Parashar as the recipient of the 2024 CRA Distinguished Service Award in recognition of his multi-faceted and highly impactful service to the computing research community. 

Parashar is the Director of the Scientific Computing and Imaging (SCI) Institute, Chair in Computational Science and Engineering, and Presidential Professor in the School of Computing at the University of Utah. He recently completed an Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA) assignment as the Office Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure. 

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SCI Institute Alumnus Steve Parker to Receive Honorary Degree

Doctor of Engineering

Steven G. Parker has a long list of “firsts” and “bests” in the field of computer science, where he is celebrated as one of the most talented researchers in the world. Today, he is the vice president of professional graphics at NVIDIA, a semiconductor company that makes high-end graphics processors used in video games, editing, 3-D rendering and artificial intelligence and machine learning applications.

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SDSC and SCI Democratizing Nationwide Access to Science Data

The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at UC San Diego and the University of Utah (Utah) have announced a national-scale pilot project, called the National Data Platform (NDP), aimed at a service ecosystem to make access to and use of scientific data open and equitable across a broad range of communities, including traditionally underrepresented researchers.

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Looking Toward an Election Year Through the Responsible AI Initiative

While AI poses risk against the upcoming election, the Responsible AI Initiative believes AI can do more good to counteract the bad.

AI President 1200x1180
Kristofer Hoon
(Design by Kristofer Hoon | The Daily Utah Chronicle)

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SCI Partners with the Leonardo for "Into the Mind of AI"

leo ai

We are delighted to partner with the Leonardo on this important and timely exhibit. A new, cutting-edge immersive exhibit coming to The Leonardo, “Into the Mind of Artificial Intelligence,” offers guests a unique glimpse into the realm of artificial intelligence. Guests are challenged to look closely, and to question everything. Where might this incredible technology take us in the future?

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TPC Announced with Founding Partners

tpcOn Friday, 10-November TPC released the announcement below. The community continues to grow–with now over 500 participants in the Slack workspace, from nearly 70 organizations around the world. We expect to announce additional partners in the coming weeks and months, as we develop governance functions and membership processes.

New International Consortium Formed to Create Trustworthy and Reliable Generative AI Models for Science

Trillion Parameter Consortium launches with dozens of founding partners from around the world

A global consortium of scientists from federal laboratories, research institutes, academia, and industry has formed to address the challenges of building large-scale artificial intelligence (AI) systems and advancing trustworthy and reliable AI for scientific discovery.

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Massive Image Dataset Blending

Read the full article on the Intel website

The National Ecology Observatory Network (NEON) periodically collects data from various locations nationwide using Airborne Observation Platforms (AOPs). It is designed to collect long-term open-access ecological data to understand better how U.S. ecosystems are changing. Regarding data management and processing, NEON's biggest challenge is acquiring, processing, and distributing the AOP data collected periodically from key locations across the nation and contributing to a data collection of hundreds of TBs, which continues to grow exponentially.

This data is processed using a combination of cloud-based and on-premises computational resources and then shared with the larger scientific community. Researchers at the University of Utah have supported this effort, providing streaming visualization solutions to make this data interactively accessible online (see an example on the NEON data portal).

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