October 8, 2009
Etc: Campus news and notes
SCIENCE INTO ART: UW oceanographer Neil Banas will have the rare experience of having his scientific data turned into art this weekend. Visual and sound artist Carrie Bodle will create a five-channel sound installation and sewing performance sonifying data from an ecosystem model Banas developed. The performance is from 2 to 6 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 10, in Westlake Park. This computer model simulates the growth and consumption of plankton in the ocean ecosystem along the Washington coast during summer 2005. The five sound channels broadcast five dimensions in this data: wind (1) and tides (2) drive the currents and turbulence that bring nutrients (3) to the surface. Once in the zone where sunlight penetrates, phytoplankton (4) grow, zooplankton (5) eat the phytoplankton, and so on up the food chain. Embroidering these five sonified data sets as one ecosystem through a public art performance, research data from the Washington coast is made audible, visual, and tangible. Also collaborating on the project is Keith Grochow, a research associate in Computer Science and Engineering.
IMAGINATION CONVERSATION: A UW professor will be participating when the Guiding Lights Network hosts Washington State’s “Imagination Conversation.” Yoky Matsuoka, associate professor of computer science and engineering, is one of three panelists for the program, which will be from 9 a.m. to noon Friday, Oct. 16, in McCaw Hall. Imagination Conversations are being held nationwide, sponsored by the Lincoln Center Institute for the Arts as a way to fuel the development of imaginative thinking. Other panelists for the conversation are Erik Lindbergh, a pilot, artist and director of the Lindbergh Foundation; and Harmit Malik of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. The discussion will be moderated by Eric Liu, a Seattle author and founder of the Guiding Lights Network; and Scott Noppe-Brandon, executive director of Lincoln Center Institute. The two are co-authors of the new book, Imagination First: Unlocking the Power of Possibility. The event is free and open to the public, but pre-registration is required. Go to www.imagination.eventbrite.com.
AWARD-WINNING MAP: A Map of the Night, a poetry collection by David Wagoner, professor emeritus of creative writing, has won the poetry category of the Washington State Book Awards. Sponsored by the Washington Center for the Book at the Seattle Public Library, the awards go to outstanding Washington authors for books published the previous year. The winners will pick up their awards at a ceremony Oct. 14.
MASTERFUL MASTERS: A novel method for traffic data collection using highway surveillance cameras is the subject of a UW master’s thesis that was named the Distinguished Master’s Thesis of the Year by The Graduate School. The thesis, by Civil and Environmental Engineering student Yegor Malinovskiy, documents how adding a simple visual cue to camera footage can simplify vehicle detection in a way that has never been done before. Such data can be then be measured using an algorithm based on vehicles’ relation to this cue. This method promises to provide more in-depth information on traffic patterns while avoiding common problems for capturing images from conditions such as camera vibration and fog. Of particular note is that the algorithm failed only 15 percent of the time in “highly challenging scenarios” in which other, existing algorithms for image sampling cannot even function. The method holds such promise to provide accurate measurements that organizations have already expressed interest in testing the algorithm.
HALL OF FAMERS: The Commication Department of the UW will induct six new members into its Alumni Hall of Fame in a ceremony the evening of Oct. 29 at the UW Club. They are H. Stuart Elway, a leading expert on public opinion and Northwest politics who runs the Elway Poll; Joanne Harrell, chief of staff for the OEM division of Microsoft; Bruce Johansen, who holds the Frederick W. Kayser Chair in the School of Communication at the University of Nebraska at Omaha; Maggie Walker, vice chair for philanthropic organization at The Seattle Foundation, president-elect of the Seattle Art Museum and co- president of the Board of Trustees for the Museum of History & Industry; Harold (Hal) Zimmerman, who published the Camas Washougal Post-Record for 23 years, was president of the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association and served almost two dozen years in the Washington state Legislature; and George Sundborg, an Alaska newspaperman who was one of the primary authors of the Alaska constitution drafted in the mid-1950s. Sundborg, who died this year, is being inducted posthumously.
