Moderator: Kalina Borkiewicz, National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States of America
Kalina Borkiewicz is a visualization programmer in the Advanced Visualization Laboratory at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, where her primary work involves writing software, scripts, and plugins to analyze, import, visualize, and render various types of scientific data. Some of the main tools she codes for include Houdini, yt, Virtual Director, and the Blue Waters supercomputer.

Lecturer(s): AJ Christensen, National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), University of Illinois, United States of America
AJ Christensen is a visualization programmer for the Advanced Visualization Lab at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He focuses on scripting, scene design, derived data, and data flow, and I is a super-user of visual effects tools like Maya and Houdini. In addition to his film credits with the AVL, he contributed to the science-inspired renderings of gravitational lensing around a black hole in the Christopher Nolan film "Interstellar" at Double Negative.

Drew Berry, The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Australia
Drew Berry is a biomedical animator who creates visualisations of dramatic cellular and molecular action inside our bodies. He began his career as a cell biologist and is fluent navigating technical reports, research data and models from scientific journals. He works as an artist and translator, transforming abstract, complicated scientific concepts into vivid, meaningful visual journeys. Since 1995 he has been at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research. His animations have exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum, MoMA, the Royal Institute of Great Britain and the University of Geneva. In 2010, he received a MacArthur Fellowship “Genius Grant”.

Greg Shirah, NASA, Scientific Visualization Studio, United States of America
Greg Shirah has degrees in computer science and mathematics from the University of Georgia and from the George Washington University. Greg has worked with computer graphics at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt Maryland for over 35 years. Greg has had made numerous contributions to SIGGRAPH over the years including the computer animation festival, art gallery, traveling art show, dailies, panels, and special sessions. He is currently the lead visualizer at NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio where he designs and develops data-driven scientific visualizations for NASA public outreach.

Christopher Fluke, Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
Associate Professor Christopher Fluke is the Director of the Advanced Visualization Laboratory at Swinburne University of Technology and a researcher with the Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing. His main interests are in 3D astronomy visualization, computational techniques for gravitational lensing, and the use of GPUs to accelerate the rate of astronomical discovery. Chris is a highly experienced science communicator, and was the founding manager of Swinburne Astronomy Productions. He was a co-recipient of the Astronomical Society of Australia's David Allen Prize in 2015 for outstanding contributions to advancement of public interest in astronomy.

Kel Elkins, NASA, Scientific Visualization Studio, United States of America
Kel Elkins is a data visualizer with NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD. He works with scientists to visualize data from NASA missions, including both observational data (from satellites, aircraft, etc.) and supercomputer simulations. These visualizations promote a greater understanding of Earth and Space Science research activities at NASA. Kel holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science and Game Technology from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from Pennsylvania State University.

Description: Scientific visualization for public education serves a vital role in our modern society which communicates with image-based memes and incentivizes out-of-context sensationalism through clickbait journalism. The SIGGRAPH community has brought artists and academics together for decades, and now has the unique capacity to engage public audiences by cutting through the noise with meaningful scientifically-validated imagery. The Advanced Visualization Lab at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, the Scientific Visualization Studio at NASA Goddard, Swinburne Astronomy Productions at the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, and the Walter+Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research are research teams with years of experience in creating high-quality cinematic scientific visualizations for public outreach. Their teams work with scientists, film producers, and education experts to create virtual tours through data collected from astronomers, geologists, biologists, and other scientific domains for high-resolution immersive screens. Films that contextualize cutting-edge computational research with a narrative and innovative visual effects help audiences build a foundational understanding about complex science concepts. This course will explore the process of creating cinematic scientific visualizations with scientific and visual effects tools for public audiences. We discuss the state-of-the-art and future challenges in visualization. We explain challenges with representing data in a seemingly objective context while making it approachable, beautiful, and compelling to experts and non-experts. We discuss the importance of interactive virtual data exploration performed cinematography. We explain how artists can leverage tools from the computational science communities, and the necessity of building custom data translation software. We demonstrate the creation of derived geometry and glyphs; manipulation and registration of correlated datasets; and design strategies for meaningful storytelling. We will present arguments on debated visualization approaches like interpolation and the inclusion of illustrative elements. And we will clarify why cinematic scientific visualization is an optimal format for retention of learning objectives and dispelling scientific misconceptions.