Engaging the Public with Media and Visualization Research

The Imaging Research Center (IRC) leverages new technologies and emerging media platforms to create meaningful connections between knowledge and people. Founded more than 30 years ago as part of UMBC’s visual arts department, the interdisciplinary center houses state-of-the-art 3D visualization tools and immersive technologies. Here is a brief sampling of IRC-supported projects.

Visual arts professor Lynn Cazabon approached the IRC with a project to help address climate change by capturing and sharing people’s personal experiences of winter and the emotional impact of global warming.

The project, designed as a mobile application, was a part of Cazabon’s 2021 – 2023 exhibition Losing Winter at the Maryland Center for History and Culture. Funding was provided by the Saul Zaentz Innovation Fund. Co-investigators included Mark Jarzynksi ’11, computer science, Ph.D. candidate in computer science and electrical engineering (CSEE) and former IRC technical director for software engineering; Ryan Zuber, IRC technical director for modeling and animation; and Tristan King , technical specialist and software development lead.

Mark Jarzynski and Marc Olano, associate professor of CSEE and affiliate professor at the IRC, collaborated to evaluate methods of generating ‘random’ visualizations to achieve the appearance of realism using computer-generated graphic imagery, better known as CGI, such as to animate ocean waves.

Their goal was to compare the quality of the results (just how random they are) with the computational effort required to create them. This would allow those creating computer graphics for things that should appear random to choose the appropriate algorithm, or random hash function, for a given situation. Their findings were published in the Journal of Computer Graphics Techniques. The research was funded in part by video game company Epic Games.

George Derek Musgrove, associate professor of history, worked with the IRC in 2019 to further develop a storytelling website sharing his research on the history of Black Power activism in the nation’s capital since the early 1960s. The project expands on research related to his book, Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation's Capital (North Carolina University Press, 2017), co-authored with Chris Myers Asch.

With support from an IRC Summer Faculty Research Fellowship, Musgrove collaborated with student researcher Kirubel Tolosa, M.S. ’23, information systems, and IRC Director Lee Boot to develop the website Black Power in D.C This site is a unique way for visitors to explore historical texts and photographs (1961 – 1998) in the context of the D.C. geography.

– Adriana Fraser