Designed especially for neurobiologists, FluoRender is an interactive tool for multi-channel fluorescence microscopy data visualization and analysis.
Deep brain stimulation
BrainStimulator is a set of networks that are used in SCIRun to perform simulations of brain stimulation such as transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) and magnetic transcranial stimulation (TMS).
Developing software tools for science has always been a central vision of the SCI Institute.

General News

parashar 278x300National Science Foundation and Office of Science and Technology (OSTP) veteran, Professor Manish Parashar, a distinguished professor of computer science at Rutgers University, will join SCI on January 1, 2021.

“We are thrilled to have a leader like Professor Parashar take the helm at the Institute,” said Dan Reed, senior vice president for Academic Affairs. “He brings an unparalleled depth and breadth of experience in cyberinfrastructure and computer and computational science that will advance SCI as it continues to innovate, grow, and build research collaborations across the entire University of Utah campus.”

ChrisJohnson galaFlyer 600x317 1We are pleased to announce the recipient of The Leonardo Award 2020 is Chris Johnson Ph.D. of the SCI Institute at the University of Utah for his curiosity, creativity and vision. Due to these unprecedented times, the Gala event was held virtually.

The event can be viewed here.

Accumulation of collagen molecular unfolding is the mechanism of cyclic fatigue damage and failure in collagenous tissues

In understanding the failure of dense collagenous soft tissues over multiple loading cycles, the predominant hypothesis for development of overuse injuries is that repeated subfailure loading causes accumulation of “micro-damage”, and when this micro-damage accumulates at a rate that is faster than can be repaired, this results in injury in a clinical sense (tissue failure and resulting pain from the injury and overload of surrounding structures). However the specific nature of this micro-damage has remained unknown. In this study, we demonstrate that the micro-damage is actually collagen molecular unfolding, which accumulates with repeated cyclic loading. Our results provide a convincing explanation for the micro-damage hypothesis: Molecular-level collagen damage is generated by tissue-level loading, and the ability to repair this damage determines whether the applied loading leads to tissue failure.

Bei 683x1024University of Utah School of Computing assistant professor Bei Wang was awarded more than $832,000 from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Early Career Research Program, one of only 75 scientists in the nation and the only faculty member from the U to earn the award this year.

Wang’s project, titled “Topology-Preserving Data Sketching for Scientific Visualization,” will conduct a study of topology-preserving data sketching techniques to improve visual exploration and understanding of large scientific data.

Proof of principle study highlights mathematical methods that are uniquely suited for personalized medicine

For the past 70 years, the best indicator of life expectancy for a patient with glioblastoma (GBM) — the most common and the most aggressive brain cancer — has simply been age at diagnosis. Now, an international team of scientists has experimentally validated a predictor that is not only more accurate but also more clinically relevant: a pattern of co-occurring changes in DNA abundance levels, or copy numbers, at hundreds of thousands of sites across the whole tumor genome.

Conferences may be a little different this year, but that hasn't stopped SCI students from showing what they're made of. This week four publications were selected as finalists in two seperate conferences.  Adam Rauff and Steven LaBelle were selected as finalists for the (virtual) student PhD paper competition at the Summer Biomechanics, Bioengineering and Biotransport Conference in June (SB3C). At this same conference Jason Manning was selected as a finalist in the undergraduate student paper competition.

corona virus gettyCongratulations 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.

covid visus

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.

chris chuckChris 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.

In order to better ensure advanced graphics and visualization capabilities are broadly available to the professional rendering, scientific visualization and virtual design communities, I am thrilled to announce that Intel is supporting the establishment of Intel® Graphics and Visualization Institutes of XeLLENCE (Intel® GVI). Three world class founding institutions have been selected:

- 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.

CORI 2It 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.