Computer Graphics & Visual Computing (CGVC) 2017

Keynote talks

Robert S. Laramee, MSc., PhD
Associate Professor in Data Visualization

Title: The Age of Data Chaos

Abstract:
Some people believe that we live in the Age of Information. I believe it’s much more accurate to say we live in the Age of Data. Even more accurate is to say we live in the Age of Data Chaos. With the rapid advancement of big data storage technologies and the ever-decreasing costs of hardware, our ability to derive and store data is unprecedented. However, a large gap remains between our ability to generate and store large collections of complex, time-dependent data and our ability to derive useful information and knowledge from it. This is complicated further by the fact that our data collection is often unstructured and usually not very well planned-to the extent of creating a environment of data chaos.
Data visualization leverages our most powerful sense, vision, in order to derive knowledge and gain insight into large, multi-variate and sometimes chaotic data sets that describe complicated and often time-dependent behavior. This talk presents a selection of case studies that address the age of data chaos with very different taster applications. To add to the chaos, the audience will determine the Outcome of the talk.

Short Bio:
Robert S. Laramee received a bachelors degree in physics, cum laude, from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (ZooMass). He received a masters degree in computer science from the University of New Hampshire, Durham. He was awarded a PhD from the Vienna University of Technology (Gruess Gott TUWien), Austria at the Institute of Computer Graphics and Algorithms in 2005. From 2001 to 2006 he was a researcher at the VRVis Research Center (www.vrvis.at) and a software engineer at AVL (www.avl.com) in the department of Advanced Simulation Technologies. Currently he is an Associate Professor at the Swansea University (Prifysgol Cymru Abertawe), Wales in the Department of Computer Science (Adran Gwyddor Cyfrifiadur). His research interests are in the areas of scientific visualization, information visualization, and visual analytics. He has published more than 130 peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals and conferences. He served as general Chair of the EuroVis 2014 conference in Swansea.


Andrew Gibb
BBC R&D Engineer

Title: Graphics and VR research and practice at the BBC

Abstract:
The BBC has taken a leading role in developing new media technologies for nearly 100 years. BBC Research and Development has always been at the heart of that effort. This talk will give an overview of the latest developments by the BBC and the R&D department in VR, AR, 360 video and interactive graphics. I'll talk about a wide range of projects from all over the BBC, from the early experiments carried out by journalists using 360 video to relate experiences from extraordinary situation like never before, to formal experiments in navigating hybrid environments constructed from 360 video and traditional textured mesh virtual worlds. A main theme of the talk will be how the expectations and restrictions on the BBC motivate what we do and how we do it.

Short Bio:
Andrew received his undergraduate degree in Physics with Music from the University of Edinburgh. He received a Masters in Audio Acoustics from the University of Salford. He is currently awaiting the judgement of his peers on the outcome of a PhD submission to the University of Bristol. He has worked at BBC R&D since 2007 on audio analysis, video analysis, video coding and virtual graphics. He was a member of the project teams for the EU FP7 projects FascinatE and 3D4YOU. Current research interests include practical image-based rendering and tooling for interactive video analysis.