Sunfall: Visual Analytics for Astrophysics
Cecilia Aragon
April 22, 2008 - 3:00PM EST
Sunfall is a production visual analytics system that accelerates science discovery by utilizing novel interactive visualization and analysis techniques to facilitate insight into complex, noisy, high-dimensional, high-volume, time-critical scientific data. Sunfall was designed and implemented by a multi-disciplinary team of computer scientists and physicists for the Nearby Supernova Factory, an international astrophysics experiment that is the largest data volume supernova search currently in operation. The Sunfall system combines novel image processing algorithms, statistical analysis, and machine learning with highly interactive visual interfaces to enable collaborative, user-driven scientific exploration of supernova image and spectral data. Now in operation at the Nearby Supernova Factory, Sunfall is the first visual analytics system in production use at a major astrophysics project. Project scientists estimate that Sunfall has reduced the data collection, processing, and management effort from 6 FTE to .75 FTE overall, freeing scientists to focus on science discovery. Additionally, by making previously unworkable scientific tasks possible, Sunfall has enabled scientists to attain new insights into their scientific data.
Dr. Cecilia Aragon is a computer scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Her research interests lie in visualization, image processing, visual analytics, and human-computer interaction. Born in the U.S. of immigrant parents, Aragon received her Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley and her B.S. in mathematics from the California Institute of Technology. Prior to holding her current appointment, she was a computer scientist at NASA Ames Research Center for nine years, and before that, the founder and CEO of a small aviation company, an airshow and test pilot, aerobatic champion, and medallist at the World Aerobatic Championships, the Olympics of aviation. She is the only Latina ever to win a spot on the United States Aerobatic Team. She has over 20 years of experience in the computing field, and has held positions in industry, academia, and government. She has experience as a software developer, architect, teamlead, researcher, and teacher, and has received numerous awards for her work.
Sponsored by:
Lawrence Berkeley National LaboratoryCAHSI (NSF Grant CNS-0540592)
