Simon Leistikow, Karim Huesmann, Dr. Alexey Fofonov, and Prof. Lars Linsen from the VISIX research group filed the winning entry of the IEEE SciVis Contest 2018. The title of the winning entry is "Visualizing Deep Water Asteroid Impacts: Interactive Visual Analysis of Multi-run Spatio-temporal Simulations". It will be presented in a formal talk at the IEEE VIS 2018 conference held in Berlin on October 21-26.

Dr. Vladimir Molchanov and Prof. Lars Linsen present a paper at the IEEE VIS 2018 conference held in Berlin on October 21-26. The paper on "Shape-preserving Star Coordinates" will appear in a special issue of the IEEE Transaction of Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG).

Karim Huesmann, Dr. Dimitar Valkov, and Prof. Lars Linsen present a demo at the 6th ACM Symposium on Spatial User Interaction (ACM SUI 2018) in Berlin, October 13-14, 2018, on "RealityAlert: Improving Users' Physical Safety in Immersive Virtual Environments"

Dr. Dimitar Valkov is one of the co-organizers of the 6th ACM Symposium on Spatial User Interaction (ACM SUI 2018), which is being held in Berlin, October 13-14, 2018. He also acquired DFG funding to support the symposium.

Adrian Derstroff is joining VISIX as of September 2018 as a research and teaching associate. We welcome him in our research group.

Dr. Alexey Fofonov and Prof. Lars Linsen published a paper on "Projected Field Similarity for Comparative Visualization of Multi-run Multi-field Time-varying Spatial Data" in the journal Computer Graphics Forum.

Prof. Linsen has acquired a new 3-years DFG project LI 1530/21-2 on "Visual Analysis of Multi-run Multi-field Simulation Data", which is a continuation of the DFG project LI 1530/21-1. The position is to be filled and there will be a respective job ad being out soon.

Two papers of the VISIX group appear in the current volume of  the Information journal. These are invited extended papers of two IVAPP 2018 papers. The papers are on "Upsampling for Improved Multidimensional Attribute Space Clustering of Multifield Data" by Dr. Vladimir Molchanov and Prof. Lars Linsen and on "A Top-Down Interactive Visual Analysis Approach for Physical Simulation Ensembles at Different Aggregation Levels" by Dr. Alexey Fofonov and Prof. Lars Linsen.

Prof. Linsen contributed an article on the topic of Digitalization to the university newspaper of the WWU wissen|leben (No. 4, 2018).

Muhammad Jawad is presenting a paper on "Designing Ensembles for Uncertainty-aware Vessel Segmentations from MRI Data" co-authored by himself, Dr. Gordan Ristovski, Prof. Horst Hahn (Jacobs University), and Prof. Lars Linsen at the international conference on Computed Assisted Radiology and Surgery (CARS 2018), which is taken place June 20-23 in Berlin, Germany.

The VISIX group is attending the EuroVis 2018 conference, which is taken place June 4-8 in Brno, Czech Republic. Prof. Linsen is presenting a short paper on "Colored Stochastic Shadow Mapping for Direct Volume Rendering" co-authored by himself and Johannes Weidner and a paper  within the co-located EnvirVis workshop on "Interactive Visual Exploration of Teleconnections in Atmospheric Datasets" co-authored by himself, Anatoliy Antonov, and collaborators from the Alfred-Wegener-Institute in Bremerhaven (Prof. Gerrit Lohmann, Dr. Monica Ionita, and Dr. Mihai Dima). Prof. Linsen also serves as one of the co-organizers of the co-located EuroRV3 workshop. He chairs a session within that workshop as well as within the main conference track.

Dr. Vladimir Molchanov presented a full paper on "Generation of Implicit Flow Representations for Interactive Visual Exploration of Flow Fields" co-authored by himself and Prof. Lars Linsen at the 26th International Conference on Computer Graphics, Visualization and Computer Vision (WSCG 2018) in Plzen, Czech Republic.

A new 3-year research project funded by the DFG and acquired by Dr. Vladimir Molchanov is starting February 1, 2018. Its topic is the Interactive Visualization and Analysis of Multidimensional Data Using Projections. We welcome Dr. Vladimir Molchanov to the VISIX group.

The best paper award of the IVAPP 2018 conference was given to the paper on Overcoming the Curse of Dimensionality When Clustering Multivariate Volume Data by Dr. Vladimir Molchanov and Prof. Lars Linsen.

The VISIX group is presenting 5 papers at the VISIGRAPP 2018 conference in Madeira, Portugal,  of which 4 papers are within the IVAPP 2018 track and 1 paper is within the GRAPP 2018 track. The IVAPP papers are on "SmoothIsoPoints: Making PDE-based Surface Extraction from Point-based Volume Data Fast" by Prof. Paul Rosenthal, Dr. Vladimir Molchanov, and Prof. Lars Linsen, on "MultiVisA: Visual Analysis of Multi-run Physical Simulation Data using Interactive Aggregated Plots" by Dr. Alexey Fofonov and Prof. Lars Linsen, on "Overcoming the Curse of Dimensionality When Clustering Multivariate Volume Data" by Dr. Vladimir Molchanov and Prof. Lars Linsen, and on "Data Aggregation and Distance Encoding for Interactive Large Multidimensional Data Visualization" by Desislava Decheva and Prof. Lars Linsen, while the GRAPP paper is on "Efficient Curvature-optimized G2-continuous Path Generation with Guaranteed Error Bound for 5-axis Machining" by Evgenia Selinger and Prof. Lars Linsen.

Prof. Linsen was invited to give a presentation on "Visual Analtics for Digital Humanities" within the Arbeitskreis Digital Humanities of the WWU.

Prof. Linsen is presenting his group's research activities at this year's Hochschultag of the WWU as a show case of research conducted at the Institute of Computer Science. His talk is on Interaktive visuelle Analyse von Big Data. The group is also giving live demos with title Virtuelle Welten - Open Door Demonstration in the Virtual Reality Lab.

Prof. Linsen is giving an invited talk on "Interactive Visual Analysis and Classification of Hyperspectral Imaging Data" at the ICSEC 2017 conference held in Doha, Qatar, from October 23 to October 24, 2017.

Dr. Dimitar Valkov and Steffen Flagge are presenting a paper on "Smooth Immersion: The Benefits of Making the Transition to Virtual Environments a Continuous Process" at the ACM SUI 2017 conference held in Brighton, UK, from October 16 to October 17, 2017. Dr. Valkov is also serving as a Session Chair. 

José Matute is presenting a paper on "Skeleton-based Scagnostics" within the InfoVis track of the IEEE VIS 2017 conference held in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S.A, from October 1 to October 6. This is joint work with our collaborator Prof. Alex Telea from the University of Groningen, The Netherlands, and Prof. Lars Linsen.

Prof. Linsen has been invited to give a Keynote Speech at this years's conference on Computer Graphics and Animation (CGA 2017) to be held in Berlin, Germany, September 25-26, 2017. His presentation is on the "Visual Analysis of Spatio-temporal Simulation Ensembles".  Prof. Linsen has also been asked to serve as a Conference Chair for this venue.

After having been elected to the Managing Board of the newly established Center for Digital Humanities at the WWU Münster, Prof. Linsen has now been elected by the Managing Board to serve as the Vice-Chairman of the center.

Prof. Linsen was appointed Session Chair and being part of the Best Paper Committee at the Eurographics Conference on Visual Computing in Biology and Medicine (VCBM 2017) held in Bremen, Germany, on September 7 and 8, 2017.

Prof. Linsen was elected to be part of the Managing Board of the newly founded Center for Digital Humanities at the WWU Münster.

Prof. Linsen is giving his Inaugural Lecture (Antrittsvorlesung) at the WWU on the topic of "Interactive Visual Analysis of Ensemble Data" on Wednesday,  July 12, at 3pm in the Lecture Hall M5 (Einsteinstr. 64).

Prof. Linsen is giving a presentation at the Homecoming Day (Alumnitag 2017) of the WWU on the "Interpretation of Computer-generated Images".

The VISIX group has an invited talk at the Summer School in Radiology "Von der Hand in den Mund" at Greifswald, Germany, within the Scientific Symposium. The invited talk on "Uncertainty in Medical Visualization" is given by José Matute.

The VISIX group has four poster presentations at this year's EuroVis 2017 conference held from June 12 to June 16 in Barcelona, Spain.

Prof. Linsen and other professors that have joined WWU Münster this semester have been welcomed by Rektor Prof. Wessels. More details.

In the current semester (Summer 2017), the VISIX group offers courses for undergraduate and graduate students including an introductory course to computer graphics, an advanced course in computer graphics on the topic of modeling, and a graduate seminar on visualization. For more details, visit our teaching website.

Researchers interested in joining VISIX as a postdoctoral fellow or as a PhD student shall contact Prof. Dr.-Ing. Lars Linsen for further information or immediately apply with the common application material (cv, diplomas, transcripts, 2 letters of recommendation).

Students (at a Bachelor or Master level) interested in joining VISIX as a (paid) student assistant for conducting small research tasks in the field of data visualization and computer graphics shall contact Prof. Dr.-Ing. Lars Linsen for further information or immediately apply with the common application material (cv, diplomas, transcripts).

This year, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Lars Linsen co-chaired the 8th international conference on Information Visualization Theory and Application (IVAPP 2017) held in Porto, Portugal, from February 27 to March 1 together with his colleague Prof. Alexandru Telea from the University of Groningen, Netherlands.

On February 1, 2017, the VISualization & graphIX (VISIX) group led by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Lars Linsen started their research and teaching efforts at the Westfälische-Wilhelms-Universität Münster within the Institute of Computer Science.