News
SCI Students Bring A-Game to Summer Conferences
Brian Zenger Receives University of Utah Graduate Fellowship
Congradulations to Brian Zenger on receiving a 2020-21 University Graduate Fellowship. The award includes an $18,900 scholarship for the academic year as well as covering regular graduate tuition. The UGRF affords Brian the opportunity to pursue his projects full-time during the 2020-21 academic year.
SCI Awarded COVID-19 Seed Grant
Congratulations to Tolga Tasdizen whos Emerging COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2 Research Application has been awarded funding by the University of Utah Health’s 3i Initiative. The project entitled AI/CXR Early Warning System for Infectious Respiratory Disease Outbreaks, proposes to research an early warning system for novel respiratory infectious disease outbreaks based on automated emerging cluster analysis of routine chest x-rays (CXR) using Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) and furthermore, to the use data collected during the COVID-19 pandemic to validate our proposed models.
ViSUS Utilized in Understanding COVID-19
SCI Institute and CEDMAV alumnus, Brian Summa has been working with colleagues at Tulane University to study the effects of COVID-19 on lung tissue. This research is made possible using ViSUS to analyze high resolution histological volumes too large to visualize with other software.
SCI Students Awarded One NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and One Honorable Mention
Congratulations to Lindsay Rupp who was awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.and Jake Bergquist who received an honorable mention.The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) helps ensure the vitality of the human resource base of science and engineering in the United States and reinforces its diversity. The program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master's and doctoral degrees at accredited United States institutions.
SCI mourns the passing of friend and mentor Bill Lorensen
The SCI Institute faculty, staff, and students were shocked and saddened to learn that our great friend and mentor Bill Lorensen passed away on December 12 from complications of colon cancer. Typically for Bill, he was optimistic and good humored to the end.Bill was a visionary researcher who enthusiastically shared his technical gifts with everyone. He loved thinking and working on interesting problems in visualization and software and found true joy in collaborating with researchers at every level and in every area. Bill’s humor was infectious and he told a great story, especially over an after-work beer, another of Bill’s passions.
Chris Johnson and Chuck Hansen Inducted into The IEEE Visualization Academy
Chris Johnson and Chuck Hansen will be inducted into The IEEE Visualization Academy (or in short Vis Academy) during the opening session of the VIS 2019 conference in Vancouver, BC, on Tuesday, October 22, 2019. The Vis Academy was established in 2018 by the IEEE vgtc Executive Committee, with the inaugural “class” of inductees to include all the Visualization Career Awardees and all the Visualization Technical Achievement Awardees, from 2004 to 2019, for a total of 32 inductees. Induction into the Vis Academy is the highest and most prestigious honor in the field of visualization.
Announcing Intel Graphics and Visualization Institutes of XeLLENCE
- Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute (SCI) at University of Utah, supported by Dr. Chris Johnson.
- Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at University of Texas, Austin with Kitware, Inc, supported by Dr. Paul Navratil and Dr. Berk Geveci.
- Visualization Institute of the University of Stuttgart (VISUS), supported by Dr. Ing. E. h. Thomas Ertl and Dr. rer. nat. Guido Reina.
HCI Announces Computational Oncology Research Initiative (CORI)
It is our distinct pleasure to announce that Howard Colman, MD, PhD, Professor in the Departments of Neurosurgery, Neurology, and Medicine (Oncology) has been appointed as the inaugural Director of the Computational Oncology Research Initiative (CORI), a new collaboration between Huntsman Cancer Institute and the Scientific Computing and Imaging (SCI) Institute.
DBS and Traumatic Brain Injury
Biomedical engineers in the laboratory of Christopher R. Butson, PhD at the Scientific Computing & Imaging (SCI) Institute are part of a team currently investigating the use of deep brain stimulation (DBS) to treat patients suffering from traumatic brain injury. The goal of this investigational therapy is to restore function through electrical stimulation. The first subject in this trial study is a woman who suffered a traumatic brain injury as the result of a car accident 18 years ago. Since undergoing DBS surgery, she has shown considerable improvements in her daily life, from experiencing less fatigue to improved cognitive function. This study demonstrates the potential impact of DBS therapy for others living with debilitating brain injuries.
Sarang Joshi Elected as a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE)
Congratulations to Sarang Joshi for being elected a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). Fellows are nominated each year by their peers and represent the top 2% of the medical and biological engineering community. They are considered the life-blood of AIMBE and work towards realizing AIMBE's vision to provide medical and biological engineering innovation for the benefit of humanity.