Ivan Viola
Multiscale Molecular Visualization
June 21th, 14:00
Amphitheater of the Digiteo Moulon Shannon building (660), How to get to there?
Abstract
Today we are able to visually explore the complete architecture of a complex virus or simple bacteria on desktop computer at interactive framerates, with a similar visual quality as available in computer games. With interactive visualization systems we can fly across several orders of magnitude from a single atom level (10^−10 m) up to the scale of entire viruses or bacteria (ca. 10^−6 m). In the coming years we foresee scaling up to an entire eukaryotic cell or extending the structure with a real-time physiological simulation of a lifetime of a simple bacteria. For such purpose, integrative structural biology research collects all necessary information about anatomical details of microorganisms on various scales. This biological evidence is transformed into a set of rules that govern a spatial distribution of structures down to the macromolecular composition consisting of proteins, nucleic acids, and membrane lipids. In order to visualize and interact with these models, a variety of computer graphics and visualization techniques have recently been developed. First, the entire organism models are being constructed using the real-time procedural modeling methodology. Then multiscale visualization techniques, which make use of very efficient illumination computations, allow the user to interactively navigate through the complex geometric model. The visibility of the densely packed building elements can be controlled by dedicated occlusion management techniques. Based on the camera parameters the level of detail schemes dynamically control which geometric abstraction is drawn, how abstracted are the photometric characteristics.
Biography
Ivan Viola is Associate Professor at the TU Wien, Austria. He received M.Sc. in 2002 and Ph.D. in 2005 from TU Wien, Austria. Afterwards, in 2006 he joined the University of Bergen, Norway as a Postdoctoral researcher and contributed to a buildup of a new research group on visualization at the Institute of Informatics. In 2008 he was promoted to Associate Professor and in 2011 to Full Professor at the University of Bergen. During this period he was also appointed as a scientific adviser at the Christian Michelsen Research, Norway. His research is focusing on illustrative visualization techniques with particular application in medicine, biological and earth sciences. Viola has co-authored about hundred of scientific works, published in international journals and conferences such as IEEE TVCG, EG CGF, Elsevier's C&G, IEEE VIS, and EG EuroVis, and acted as a reviewer and IPC member for conferences in the field of computer graphics and visualization.