NSF: National Visualization and Analytics Center (NVAC)

National Science Foundation: Partnering to Advance Data and Visual Analytics

Larry Rosenblum
National Science Foundation

In July 2007, the Department of Homeland Security and the National Science Foundation announced that a formal partnership between NSF and DHS (represented by NVAC) had been created to conduct a joint research program in data and visual analytics. This partnership between NSF and NVAC has been under development for several years. As the NSF point of contact, I have attended VAC Consortium meetings and served as an advisor to NVAC leadership. We are all excited about the opportunities this formal partnership will bring.

The Problem

Those involved with science, engineering, commerce, health and national security all increasingly face the challenge of synthesizing information and deriving insight from massive, dynamic, ambiguous and possibly conflicting digital data. The goal of collecting and examining these data is not to merely acquire information but to derive increased understanding from it and to facilitate effective decision-making.

Where We’re Headed

To capitalize on the opportunities provided by these data sets, NSF solicited proposals from academia that capitalize on knowledge and expertise in the fields of mathematics, computational science and intelligent systems (proposal deadline was November 20, 2007). The goal is to produce new data representations and transformations that will enable data stakeholders to detect the expected and discover the unexpected in massive data sets. This new program is called Foundations of Data and Visual Analytics, and FODAVA is the focus of the new NSFVAC. FODAVA is concerned only with a subset of the overall problem, namely the creation of the mathematical and computational sciences foundations required to transform data in ways that permit visual-based understanding.

Note that visualization is not specifically a FODAVA topic. Rather, FODAVA is concerned with the mathematical and computational models and transformations that will restructure data to provide future visualization systems with a superior ability to extract information using the new models and algorithms. FODAVA emphasizes fundamental research that will impact future-generation systems and also emphasizes novel, potentially high-impact ideas rather than advances on current algorithms and techniques.

Two Collaborative Efforts

We are establishing two types of research efforts: FODAVA Lead and FODAVA Partnerships. The FODAVA Lead effort will be granted to a research team where all team members belong to a single academic institution that will assume a leadership and coordination role. The FODAVA Lead will also play a key role in the development of FODAVA as a research field. In addition to forming the lead scientific research team, this institution will be responsible for assuring that results are disseminated to the FODAVA community, that effective liaison between FODAVA researchers and NVAC takes place, that testbed data sets are developed and disseminated and that the mathematics and computer science research communities become increasingly aware of the need for FODAVA-related research. FODAVA Partnership efforts will be two-to-three-year fundamental research projects. These academic partners will actively participate with the FODAVA Lead institution in developing FODAVA as a field.

“This partnership with NSF is the most important event since the creation of NVAC in March 2004. It brings to the front stage efforts by folks within DHS, NVAC and NSF to jointly fund the development of basic research in visual analytics supporting DHS applied mission needs.”
~Jim Thomas, NVAC Director

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