2023 UTEP Visualization & Interactive Collaboration Competition Results
The Office of Research and Sponsored Projects (ORSP) is pleased to announce the outcome of the inaugural UTEP VizInC Competition that took place on Friday, April 28. This student-focused competition offered an opportunity for students and their faculty coaches to demonstrate creative ways to use visualization to present complex problems. Interdisciplinary team approaches were encouraged.
Undergraduate and graduate students worked in teams alongside their faculty mentor(s) culminating in presentations before a panel of judges and their peers. Visualizations presented included video renderings, knowledge graphs, and 3D models. Student competitors then fielded questions by a discerning panel of faculty judges.
Presentations took place in the Visualization and Interactive Collaboration Lab (VizInC) in the Interdisciplinary Research Building (IDRB), a state-of-the-art space outfitted with hardware geared for ultra-high resolution data visualizations and analysis. VizInC provides a 100-million-pixel visualization wall that allows researchers to collaboratively explore large complex datasets, a high-performance rendering node for intensive computations, a multi-touch system to facilitate exploration of models and a 3D projection system for immersive stereoscopic rendering of scientific data. VizInC is available to the UTEP research community requiring such capabilities.
A total of seven (7) undergraduate students, eight (8) graduate students, and one (1) post-doctoral fellow participated in this year’s competition. We congratulate all our competitors and their faculty mentor(s) for their outstanding efforts. This year’s awards include cash prizes for the following teams:
Team Girus – 1st Place
Aquatic giant viruses or giruses, have important ecological roles within water systems to maintain biodiversity, regulate microorganism populations, and accelerate the recycling of nutrients. Due to their large size, study of these viruses has posed a challenge to current techniques. Our team tackles the visualization challenges of Cafeteria roenbergensis virus (CroV), a giant marine virus consisting of a 120 million atom protein shell. We generated various 3-D and stereoscopic images and animations to mimic the virus assembly by automatically load large number of virus capsid proteins, position them, and simulate Brownian motion using codes developed by programming languages such as Python, C, and TCL.
Emiliano Islas Quinones, Undergraduate
Ivan Acedo Aguilar, Undergraduate
David S Rivera, Undergraduate
Katia A. Villalva, Undergraduate
Christina A. Valtierra, Undergraduate
Mentor: Dr. Chuan (River) Xiao
Clinical Applied Physiology (CAPh) Laboratory – 2nd Place
The carotid arteries are major arteries in the neck, which supply blood to the brain, and are commonly implicated in vascular diseases. MRI and DICOM file processing were done to generate a bilateral 3D model of the carotids via the usage of the modeling software 3D Slicer and 3-D stereoscopic visualization using Paraview.
Pedro Alejandro Martinez, Undergraduate
Manuel Gomez, PhD student
Dr. Daniel Conde, Post-Doctoral fellow
Mentor: Dr. Alvaro N. Gurovich
Lower Brainstem – 3rd Place
The medulla oblongata is the most posterior topographic division of the lower brainstem. It continuously receives information from the bodily organs and regulates their function through several physiological systems, including the cardiovascular system. 3-D visualization of intact rat lower brainstem samples was accomplished utilizing light sheet microscopy to examine neural and vascular architecture of the medulla and revealed a new perspective as to how the brain is structurally organized and how it may be coordinating cardiovascular function.
Geronimo P. Tapia, PhD student
Jessica V. Salcido, Masters student
Andrew Sanchez, Undergraduate student
Mentor: Dr. Sivasai Balivada
Connected Nodes – 4th Place
Developed an R Shiny app that depict a series of network graphs showcasing the changes that occurred before and after a two-year research training program. In particular, the network models depict latent structures of identity, self-efficacy, and self-concept for students undergoing biomedical research training at UTEP.
Hernandez, Hortencia J, PhD student
Adeyina, Tolulope, PhD student
Mccreary, Robert D, PhD student
Sarah, Majd, PhD student
Mentor: Dr. Amy Wagler
Mentor: Dr. Erika Mein