Topic “Spring 2011 Seminars”

We will discuss a very interesting and wide-ranging project with colleagues at UNC Chapel Hill and several other universities (and government agencies such as FEMA, NOAA, and DHS) to investigate large scale natural disasters and emergency response. The disasters discussed include hurricanes, the storm surge they produce, extreme rainfall, flooding, and man-made disasters such as the recent oil spill. We are developing a variety of novel visual analytics methods to attack these complex, coupled events.

The arc of the presentation will be to demonstrate some of how the alphabet grew to its general shape. In addition, I will show a little of its evolution in the Western Hemisphere (its variations) and reference some further reading.

The knowledge gained from biology datasets can streamline and speed-up pharmaceutical development. However, computational models generate so much information regarding protein behavior that large-scale analysis by traditional methods is almost impossible. The volume of data produced makes the transition from data to knowledge difficult and hinders biomedical advances. Over two years of collaboration with protein scientists has resulted in a novel visual analytics approach named WaveMap for exploring data generated by a protein flexibility model.