Photo of APL Kossiakoff Center

VAC Consortium Meeting Photo Tour

Click on any photo to view a larger size. Please send requests for originals to Ian Roberts at nvac@pnl.gov

The day before the formal meeting, NVAC and RVAC researchers participated in an interactive class focusing on the intelligence and emergency response aspects of the battle of Gettysburg.

The meeting was held at the Kossiakoff Center of the Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. The facility was an excellent venue for the meeting. Jim Thomas, NVAC Director, welcomed participants and thanked our sponsoring partners, Boeing (meeting co-sponsor), Endeca (lunch), and NVIDIA (dinner).

DHS Science Advisor in S&T Joe Kielman delivered a thought-provoking talk challenging the participants to go beyond reading words by understanding meaning and intent.

Randy Barber of the Open Source Center delivered a keynote address about his organization. The Law Enforcement panel saw presentations from several members of the community who showed their current usage of visual analytics and needs for the future.

Following lunch and networking time, Jeff Morrison from IARPA presented the A-SpaceX program to use virtual world technology to free analysts from their traditional desktop environments, and Bill Ribarsky from UNCC reported on a recent financial analytics workshop.

Before releasing participants to the demonstration floor, representatives from each booth were given one minute each to promote their demonstration and get people to visit their booth. Shawn Bohn from PNNL was the crowd favorite with a juggling act used to explain information fusion.

Always a highlight of VAC Consortium meetings, the demonstration and poster session provided hours of interesting conversation and sharing.

The Wednesday evening social and dinner provided more networking time and an opportunity for Jim to recognize companies and individuals for their help with the VAC complex.

Wednesday opened with a panel of members of the intelligence community discussing their daily work and answering questions from the audience. Inspector Lance Valcour from the Canadian Police Research Centre spent some time highlighting the differences and similarities of law enforcement in Canada and highlighted ways the new U.S.-Canadian partnership can benefit visual analytics.

The main meeting concluded with a talk from Boeing's Pamela Drew, followed by several other researchers describing their recent work in visual analytics.