Scientific Visualization
Richard Hamming famously asserted
that "The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers." His
motto is often taken to say that the numbers are a means to an end
and not an end in themselves, but it also embraces the wider
principle of using computing to understand the real world and its
processes. Scientific visualization is one cog in this machinery of
understanding: it may variously confirm or challenge our
preconceptions of a system; it may reveal different ways of
approaching a problem, or flaws in an approach already
employed.
At Hull, our scientific
visualization research follows two threads. In the
computational steering thread we do underpinning research that
brings computational science and visualization together to enable
more timely and insightful investigations than is possible by
conventional approaches. In our daily practice of
visualization we try to meet the needs of diverse groups of
engineers and scientists, and from these experiences extract
guiding principles that lead to more usable and useful systems.
Projects
Impact
A major impact of our work has been
the establishment of an EPSRC network to promote computational
steering. CompuSteer (www.hull.ac.uk/compusteer)
ran for two years up to January 2008 and gathered together
engineers, physicists, chemists, biologists and computer
scientists, to discuss, disseminate and promote the approach.
In a related venture we are also working to encourage the use of
high-performance computing (HPC) by Hull's scientists and
engineers, both locally via HIVE's own HPC and in the wider context
via the National Grid Service (www.ngs.ac.uk), the UK's
computational research support initiative.
Page last updated by David Morris on
6/17/2011