Beyond the Data Cliff: Visualisation Strategies for Understanding Large Data

Description: As scientific instrumentation is advanced, total data volumes increase in size, acquisition rate and complexity. Spectacular examples include the Large Hadron Collider projects, the Allen Human Brain Atlas, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope projects and closer to home, the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder telescope surveys. Contemporary informatics approaches are solving the challenges of storing, finding and retrieving large data extracts and collections, and instantiating sophisticated post-processing workflows.

But what of traditional analysis and visualisation, and understanding and comprehending the data at hand? Drawing examples from neuroscience, astrophysics, geoscience and anatomy, I will describe the data that is collected and how it is analysed, and especially visualised, to enable discovery and insight. I will place this work in the context of the impending data cliff that many science and engineering disciplines face, and motivate the need for advanced, immersive visualisation facilities that are closely-coupled to the large data sources and computing systems.

With the scene set, I will introduce Monash University's newest advanced visualisation platform, the CAVE2 (TM), built in collaboration with our partners at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago. CAVE2 is a large-scale, immersive, head-tracked virtual reality environment backed by a high-performance supercomputer. It boasts 84 million pixels at ultra-high clarity and contrast, and exploits Monash's research-grade network fabric to connect to local and remote data sources and supercomputing centres.

Monash foresees the CAVE2 becoming a critical piece of research infrastructure, fulfilling the role of the world's finest viewfinder in the 21st century microscope, but also serving a unique role as a collaborative display environment for comprehending large data, accelerating and transforming the research process to enable the most important discoveries now and in the future. I will describe and highlight our early successes in the CAVE2 and finally, briefly speculate on the future of immersive visualisation.
Presenter: Dr David Barnes, Senior Research Fellow, CAVE2 Platform Manager, Monash University