LSU Boosts Digital Media Presence in Louisiana Through Research, Festival
The LSU Center for Computation & Technology, or CCT, is leading several initiatives to develop a strong digital media industry in Louisiana through animation, scientific visualization, computational sciences and other areas of research in emerging art forms.
CCT recently hosted the fourth annual Red Stick International Animation Festival, the largest festival of its kind in the United States, which highlights the intersections among art, technology and computational science. Each year, Red Stick draws renowned animators, video game developers and other industry professionals to Baton Rouge to host lectures, workshops, and other events for aspiring artists, programmers and entrepreneurs.
Based on the success of Red Stick, CCT has embarked upon new endeavors that will boost research in this area and strengthen Louisiana’s workforce base in digital industries. LSU, along with the Baton Rouge Area Chamber, Baton Rouge Area Foundation and East Baton Rouge Parish Mayor-President’s Office, created the Baton Rouge Area Digital Industries Consortium in June 2007. The consortium members work together to promote opportunities for digital industries in the state’s capital city, promoting the aggressive tax incentives that make Louisiana a lucrative place to do business.
“This consortium represents a partnership among the leading education and economic development groups in our city, who have worked hard throughout the past several years to boost digital industries in Louisiana,” said Baton Rouge Area Digital Industries Consortium Executive Director Stacey Simmons. “We are finally starting to see the benefits of this effort, and I think within the next few years, the combination of our efforts and the state’s aggressive tax incentive packages will make Baton Rouge one of the top cities to locate video game companies, animation studios and other digital media-based businesses.”
LSU also has developed several new research areas that tie into digital media. CCT and Department of Computer Science Professor Gabrielle Allen is leading a multidisciplinary hiring initiative in computational sciences that will recruit new faculty with research interests in scientific visualization, which is important for scientists who use high-performance computing to simulate and analyze complex problems such as black hole collisions, hurricane formation and the flow of oil and gas through underground reservoirs.
“Visualization is a true intersection of art and science, where we can use new technologies to give new insight into complex science problems,” Allen said.
CCT and LSU School of Music Professor Stephen David Beck is leading a different multi-disciplinary hiring initiative called AVATAR: Arts, Visualization, Advanced Technologies and Research that will bring in as many as six new faculty doing research in two primary topics and their related technologies: intelligent and responsive systems (which include video games, training systems and simulation visualizations) and collaborative digital media arts.
AVATAR is now the focus of a strategic hiring process that will recruit renowned faculty to LSU, leading to advanced research in digital media, as well as new educational opportunities for students.
“A crucial part of developing industry in our area is developing new technologies and a talented work force that will empower the next generation of video game developers, animators and digital artists to succeed right here,” Beck said. “AVATAR will build off successes we have seen through the Red Stick festival and will make it possible to spin off emerging technologies and establish new businesses, as well as prepare students in the area for a career in video gaming, animation or other forms of digital art.”
AVATAR also builds off of the digital media cluster in CCT’s Cultural Computing research focus area, which has three open faculty positions with joint appointments in music, art and electrical and computer engineering to expand this focus. The Cultural Computing area has been conducting research into virtual environments such as Second Life that will expand how researchers can use these new techniques in innovative ways.
CCT in the News:
4/25/08
Inventor of Beowulf Cluster Exposes Young Minds to High-Performance Computing
Microsoft
The Louisiana State University Center for Computation & Technology (CCT) is working to address the decline in the number of undergraduate students choosing computer science as a field of study.
http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000001782
4/29/08
Festival on the Mississippi: The Shape and Color of Red Stick
Animation World Magazine
The Mississippi River city known as Baton Rouge, Louisiana has been around for 300 years or so, dating back to a French explorer's sighting of a red cypress pole marking the boundary between two Native American tribes.
http://mag.awn.com/index.php?ltype=pageone&article_no=3625#
4/28/08
Baton Rouge Looks to Video Games for Economic Growth
Game Daily
While most U.S. cities push biotech to drive economic growth, one municipality is using video games to do the same -- Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It's an unlikely match, given the establishment of California as the nation's video game capital, but one the fast-growing Southern city is convinced will be its future just the same.
http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/features/baton-rouge-looks-to-video-games-for-economic-growth/?biz=1
4/23/08
High-Tech Meet Up Links Students Here, Other Campuses
University of Illinois
Faster than Facebook, more powerful than MySpace, able to speed problem-solving in a single bound: that’s the new high-tech meeting space for computer science students on campus.
http://www.cct.lsu.edu/site.php?pageID=66&newsID=800
Upcoming Lectures:
• Special Guest Lecture: Thirupathi Gudi, CCT post doc, will give a lecture on “A Posteriori Error Estimates for Discontinuous Galerkin Finite Element Methods for Elliptic Problems” on Thursday, May1at 3:30 p.m. in Johnston 338.
• Special Guest Lecture: Ian Vega, University of Florida Graduate Student, will give a lecture on “Particles Moving Around Black Holes: Opportunities in self-force Problems” on Friday, May 2 at 10 a.m. in Johnston 338.
• CCT Colloquium Series: Will Venters, London School of Economics and Political Science, will give a lecture titled “The Distributed Development of Grid Infrastructure for the LHC@CERN” on Friday, May 2 at 11:30 a.m. in Johnston Hall room 338.
• Special Guest Lecture: Patrick Brady, Professor at University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, will deliver a lecture titled “Enabling Gravitational Wave Astronomy on the LIGO Data Grid,” on Monday, May 5 at 3:40 p.m. in Johnston 338.
• IMPORTANT: Anyone organizing a lecture OR EVENT should first check with Karen Jones for available dates to avoid having multiple lectures/events on the same day. Also, coordinate with your Focus Area lead so that CCT can get the best attendance possible. There may be open slots in a standard lecture series that need to be filled.
Please Note:
• This week is the last week of classes for the spring semester, and final exams will take place next week. Please check with your student workers to see what their availability will be for the next two weeks and in the summer months.
• Upcoming ALL CCT Meetings for the spring are scheduled as follows: May 21, June 18 and July 16. All meetings are held at 3 p.m. in 338 Johnston Hall. Faculty, staff and students are encouraged to attend.
• If you have any news for the CCT Weekly, please e-mail PR Manager Kristen Sunde directly at ksunde@cct.lsu.edu.
Upcoming Grant Deadlines:
Note: Please see the CCT deadline Web site, as many NSF deadlines are listed here: http://www.cct.lsu.edu/about/grants/deadlines/events.php
Nanotechnology Undergraduate Education (NUE) in Engineering
May 14 2008 10:15 a.m.
A Portion Of $1,900,000.00 available
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2008/nsf08544/nsf08544.htm?govDel=USNSF_25
International Research and Education: Planning Visits and Workshops
May 20 2008 10:15 am
A Portion Of $ 1,500,000.00 available
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2004/nsf04035/nsf04035.htm
Publish Date:
04-29-2008
