ACMD Seminar: Large Scale Distribution-based Data Analysis and Visualization

Han-Wei Shen
Professor, Computer Science and Engineering, The Ohio State University

Tuesday, May 23, 2017, 15:30 - 16:30
Building 101, Lecture Room C
Gaithersburg

Tuesday, May 23, 2017, 13:30 - 14:30
Room 1-4058
Boulder

Abstract: Scientists overview and identify regions of interest by transforming data into compact information descriptors that characterize simulation results and allow detailed analysis on demand. Among many existing feature descriptors, statistical information derived from data samples is a promising approach to taming the big data avalanche because data distributions computed from a population can compactly describe the presence and characteristics of salient data features with minimal data movement. The ability to computationally summarize and process data using distributions also provides an efficient and representative capture of information that can adjust to the size and resource constraints, with the added benefit, that uncertainty associated with the results can be quantified and communicated.  In this talk, I will discuss our recent works on using distributions as a new paradigm for representing large-scale scientific data sets.  Our goals are to ensure that scientists can easily obtain an overview of the entire data set regardless of the size of the simulation output; understand the characteristics and locations of features; easily interact with the data and select regions and features of interest, and perform all the analysis tasks with a small memory footprint.

Bio: Han-Wei Shen is a full professor at The Ohio State University. He has over two decades of experience in large-scale data visualization and analysis. He has participated in many federal big data research initiatives, including the NSF's big data program, multiple Department of Energy (DOE)’s Scientific Data Management and Analysis at Extreme Scale projects, and DOE's SciDAC Institute of Scalable Data Management, Analysis, and Visualization.  Before joining Ohio State, he was a research scientist at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View California between 1996 and 1999. His primary research interests are scientific visualization and computer graphics. Professor Shen is a winner of National Science Foundation's CAREER award and US Department of Energy's Early Career Principal Investigator Award. He also won the outstanding teaching award three times from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Ohio State University.

Host: Wesley Griffin