Digital Media
In its "Strategy for the Future", noting both global trends and state investments and strengths, Louisiana's Department of Economic Development (LED) identifies next generation digital media / software development as its first of six themes. Digital media engages, enables, and transforms virtually all areas of society -- science, engineering, business, entertainment, public affairs, and far beyond. The nature and particulars of digital media vary widely from work to work; but all typically engage several aspects in varying degrees: (i) dmedia technology (software, hardware, and other science and engineering aspects which embody and characterize dmedia), (ii) dmedia arts (visual, physical, aural, and aligned elements that make dmedia legible, actionable, inspirational, and aspirational), (iii) dmedia applications (science and engineering, business, productivity, and entertainment). The digital media research currently engages five broad areas: Computer games, Computer graphics, Geographical information systems, Human-computer interaction, and Visualization. In addition, in partnership with CCT, we are also engaged in two major multi-college academic initiatives: an undergraduate digital media minor (including both tech and arts subthemes); and an emerging master's degree in Digital Media Arts & Engineering.
Faculty
Bijaya Karki: Scientific Visualization and Applications
Mingxuan Sun: Visualization, Computer Vision
Nate Brener: Scientific Visualization
Brygg Ullmer: Human-Computer Interaction, Tangible Visualization
Hartmut Kaiser: Geographical Information Systems
Xin Li: Computer Graphics, Shape Mapping
Omer Soysal: Computer Vision, Geographical Information Systems
Specific Projects
Human-computer interaction: Ullmer's research on tangible interfaces employs computationally sensed and mediated physical artifacts as representations and controls for diverse applications. Target applications center on computational STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) and digital media. Supported by NSF.
Scientific visualization: Karki uses advanced visualization to gain insight into materials simulations by developing domain-specific techniques and tools: Space-time multi-resolution atomistic visualization, multiple dataset visualization, and vector (flow) data visualization. The CFD (computational fluid dynamics) visualization research involves collaboration with Brener. Supported by NSF-EAR and NSF-IGERT.
Tangible visualization: Ullmer employs tangible interfaces as interactive tools for visualizing STEAM areas including genomics, astrophysics, fluid dynamics, and environmental models. Supported by NSF.
Visual Social Sensing: Sun explores new approaches for image understanding using both visual-cues including appearance and geometry analysis and non-visual cues such as text tags, reviews, and human ratings collected from social sharing websites.