February 14, 2022

Susana Marcos has been honored by the largest eye and vision research organization.

Dear members of the Hajim School community,

Congratulations to Susana Marcos, the David R. Williams Director of the Center for Visual Science, the Nicholas George Professor of Optics, and a professor of ophthalmology. Susana has been elected to the 2022 class of Gold Fellows by the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO). The largest eye and vision research organization has a membership of nearly 11,000 researchers from more than 75 countries. Susana is an internationally recognized expert in the optics of the eye, ocular imaging, and visual corrections. Learn more.

Susana, who joined the University last year, is working to bolster the center’s global reputation by fostering multidisciplinary collaborations in vision science both internally at the University and internationally. Her goals also include strengthening the alumni network, recruiting talented students, and sourcing seed funding to develop a pilot program that would foster cross-disciplinary research. She also aims to develop a model that accelerates CVS research to industry. Learn more about the center.

RESEARCH NEWS

Elmina Castle is among 20 historic forts and castles along the coast of Ghana that constitute a single world heritage site, protected by UNESCO as a “monument not only to the evils of the slave trade, but also to nearly four centuries of pre-colonial Afro-European commerce on the basis of equality.”

How do you digitally reconstruct 33 billion laser scan data points of a historic castle in Ghana, so that people wearing virtual reality (VR) headsets thousands of miles away can experience what it would be like to walk through each of the 120 rooms and exterior areas, seeing every detail as if they were actually there?

And how would you do so using low-end desktop systems, making the experience accessible to a broad range of people?

Yuhao Zhu, assistant professor of computer science; Michael Jarvis, professor of history; Sifan Ye ’20, and Ting Wu ’20 MS have demonstrated a way to do it, using laser scans taken at Elmina Castle in conjunction with our Ghana field school. Their paper just received the Kostas Pantazos Memorial Award for Outstanding Paper in Visualization and Data Analysis at the annual Electronic Imaging Conference of the Society for Imaging Science and Technology (IST).

Normally reconstructing such a large data base with existing 3D systems would involve expensive, time-consuming computational resources, or decreased visual quality, or slower rendering by the VR headset. Instead, the team describes a reconstruction system that avoids these trade-offs by directly transferring details from the original point cloud to a UV map generated by a low polygon mesh. This significantly reduces the reconstruction time and cost, preserves the scene details, and enables real-time rendering on mobile VR devices.

This exciting new approach offers archaeologists and historians an important tool to make our past accessible and meaningful for millions of people—at a moment when we dare not forget what our past can teach us. With the support of a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Digital Humanities grant, the team is now working on applying this general method to other historical artifacts and sites. Well done, Yuhao, Mike, Sifan, and Ting!

BME AND APIJECT

Here’s some really exciting news from the Department of Biomedical Engineering. A $100,000 gift from Jay Walker, executive chairman of ApiJect Systems Corp., a medical technology company, will support medical device design projects for the department’s senior undergraduates and master’s students, new scholarships, and a Create-a-Thon medical device design contest for students University wide.

“What is really exciting is the opportunity this gives us to introduce health care engineering in global and low-resource environments throughout our curriculum, in partnership with a company that has this as their mission,” says Diane Dalecki, the department chairperson and Kevin J. Parker Distinguished Professor in Biomedical Engineering.

This is wonderful example of how the generosity of our alumni, friends, and corporate partners can create exciting opportunities for our students. Thanks to Jay, ApiJect, Diane and the BME faculty and staff, and everyone else who made this possible. Learn more.

ART OF SCIENCE REMINDER

Our annual Art of Science Competition is now accepting submissions from currently enrolled students, faculty, and staff. Photographs, illustrations, visualizations, renderings, and posters showing an artistic representation of science, technology, engineering, math, and sustainability themes should be submitted by March 18, 2022, to the online submission form. Cash prizes of $1,000, $500, and $250 will be awarded to winning student entries. All other entries will be eligible for a People’s Choice Award of $250. For inquiries, contact the project team at artofsciencecontest@gmail.com. Learn about last year’s winning entries here.

Have a great week!

Your dean,
Wendi Heinzelman