Graphics and Visualization Center

Computer graphics bring to life a vast range of human imaginings. With graphics and visualization we have unprecedented power to explore our world and to communicate what we learn in new ways. Over the past decade, the computer's ability to create images has led to such innovations as mouse-driven graphical user interfaces, desktop publishing, and multimedia communications. The entertainment industry now relies on visual computing for vivid new characters and landscapes.

Computer-aided design tools enable engineers to build complex systems like the Boeing 777 without having to create a full-scale engineering mock-up. Through computer imaging we can see inside the human body without performing surgery. For many scientists, doctors, engineers and other professionals, the computer's power to visualize both real-world data and abstract relationships has become an indispensable tool.

The increasingly interdisciplinary field of computer graphics and visualization requires interdisciplinary research at a foundational level, integrating such diverse fields as physics, optics, thermodynamics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, and perception psychology, as well as computer science.



The hallway of a house in Scotland designed by the architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh. This environment can be displayed dynamically on the Pixel-Planes 5 graphics supercomputer at the University of North Carolina, and controlled interactively from the Center's other sites.

The Need for Leadership

The need for leadership in the quest to strengthen the foundations of computer graphics led the National Science Foundation (NSF) to establish the NSF Science and Technology Center for Computer Graphics and Scientific Visualization in 1991. The Center is one of 24 NSF Science and Technology Centers created to work towards coherent long-term approaches to basic research that break down traditional barriers between disciplines. The Graphics and Visualization Center is a consortium of research groups from five universities: Brown University, the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Cornell University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the University of Utah. Each site boasts an extensive record of cutting-edge research in areas of graphics and visualization necessary to realize the Center's vision.

The Graphics and Visualization Center pursues research in modeling, rendering, high-performance architectures, graphical interaction and communication, and scientific visualization. Center researchers are developing new rendering algorithms based on the physics of light, new physically-based models, sophisticated mathematics for 3D surface definition, new parallel display architectures, easier-to-use 3D user interfaces for individual and collaborative work on the desktop and in virtual environments, and new techniques for scientific visualization.

Meeting the challenge posed by multi-site collaboration has made the Graphics and Visualization Center a leader in exploring emerging communications technologies. A dedicated high-bandwidth (T-1 capacity) communications infrastructure furnishes simultaneous interactive video and data exchange on demand, providing a testing ground for a geographically distributed "laboratory without walls."

Meeting the challenge posed by multi-site collaboration has made the Graphics and Visualization Center a leader in exploring emerging communications technologies. A dedicated high-bandwidth (T-1 capacity) communications infrastructure furnishes simultaneous interactive video and data exchange on demand, providing a testing ground for a geographically distributed "laboratory without walls."

The Graphics and Visualization Center approaches the challenge of rebuilding the scientific basis of computer graphics on three fronts:

  • Research conducted collaboratively by faculty, research staff and students.
  • Education on the Undergraduate, Graduate, and Post Doctoral Level
  • Outreach to K-12, local communities, industry, and academe


Developmental Modeling. We simulate cellular development to create three-dimensional textures. Simulated cells grow, divide, and interact with each other according to programmable rules based on developmental biology and differential equations. The cells proliferate over a surface and automatically generate textures that would be difficult to create by hand.

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