VRVis

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VRVis Center for Virtual Reality and Visualization Research GmbH

logo
legal form Company with limited liability
founding 2000
Seat Vienna (1220, Donau-City-Strasse 11)
management Gerd Hesina (managing director),

Werner Purgathofer (scientific management)

sales approx. € 6.4 million (2018)
Branch Applied research, development, consulting
Website www.vrvis.at

The VRVis Center for Virtual Reality and Visualization  ( VRVis ) is the largest independent research center in the field of visual computing in Austria. The VRVis is one of the COMET competence centers at level K1 and, together with the COMET competence centers at the top level K2, is one of the federally funded centers of Austrian technology policy. The VRVis is located in the Ares Tower in Vienna .

history

The VRVis Center for Virtual Reality and Visualization was founded in January 2000 as part of the Kplus Competence Center Program, the Austrian government program for cooperation between industry and science, by the Vienna University of Technology together with two institutes of the Graz University of Technology , the Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence (ÖFAI) and the Center for Usability Research and Engineering (CURE).

Founding institutes:

After Kplus funding from 2000 to 2007, VRVis was funded by the Vienna program "Vienna Spots of Excellence" in 2008 and 2009, and since January 1, 2010 it has been the COMET K1 center as part of the continuation of the Kplus program . In 2016, another COMET K1 funding was approved for the period 2017 to 2024.

VRVis was located in Tech Gate Vienna from 2001-2017 and has been in the Ares Tower in Vienna since June 1, 2017 .

Organization and tasks

The VRVis Center for Virtual Reality and Visualization is an association of partners from science and business in the field of visual computing, supported by funding from the federal government and the State of Vienna. The non-profit-oriented GmbH is 100% owned by the non-profit-oriented association "Association of the Competence Center for Virtual Reality and Visualization", whose sole task is the administration of VRVis GmbH. The members of the association are currently (2017):

The activity includes the implementation of basic and application-oriented research projects in the field of visual computing . Projects that are funded by other sponsors and research work on behalf of third-party companies are also processed.

Around 70 researchers from different specialist areas work together with scientific and industrial partners to develop software and system solutions and conduct basic research in visual computing areas. So far around 500 scientific papers have been published and 20 “Best Paper” awards have been won.

The scientific network is very extensive and includes ETH Zurich (CH), University of Bergen (N), University of Rostock (D), KAUST (Saudi Arabia), University Medical Center Freiburg (D), Technical University Delft (NL), St. Thomas' Hospital (UK), Virginia Tech Institute (USA), Arizona State University (USA), City University London (UK), European Space Agency ESA , Fraunhofer IGD (D), Stanford University (USA), University of Konstanz (D), Harvard University (USA), Imperial College London (UK), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (USA), German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence DFKI (D), Institute of Science and Technology - Austria IST-A (A), The Open University ( UK), TU Eindhoven (NL) and many more.

Corporate partners include Agfa Healthcare (B / A), AVL List , Geodata, ÖBB Infrastruktur AG, IMP - Research Institute of Molecular Pathology , Zumtobel Lighting, Austrian Power Grid , HILTI , Stadtentwässerungsbetriebe Köln , RHI Magnesita , GE Healthcare and many more.

Areas of competence

The center researches and operates technology transfer in these four areas:

Visualization (generation of artificial images from any data)

  • Scientific visualization (visualizing data so that scientists can better understand it)
  • Medical visualization (processing of CT and MR images to make medical diagnoses easier)
  • Scalable solutions (visualization also for huge amounts of data, different viewers, on any device, etc.)

Visual Analytics (preparation of a wide variety of data so that you can find regularities)

  • Data mining (systematic application of statistical methods for this purpose)
  • Simulation visualization (presentation of simulation results)
  • Software development (production of a comprehensive computer program for these tasks)

Rendering (creating natural-looking images with the computer)

  • Light simulation (correct calculation of all light effects in a complex scene)
  • Modeling (creation and representation of complex objects in the computer)
  • Virtual Reality (simulating a non-existent artificial environment)

Computer vision (recognizing objects with a computer)

  • Segmentation of 3D data (division of images into parts that belong together)
  • Reconstruction (modeling of objects from images thereof)

Prizes and awards

  • Zero Project Award 2020, 1st place to Andreas Reichinger, Cornelia Travnicek and Daniela Stoll for the project "ARCHES - Accessible Resources for Cultural Heritage EcoSystems", February 2020
  • e-Award 2020: Category Social Responsibility, 1st place to Andreas Reichinger for the project "ARCHES - Accessible Resources for Cultural Heritage EcoSystems", January 2020
  • Siemens Award of Excellence, Silvana Zechmeister and Laura R. Luidolt, January 2020
  • Thesis Fast Forward of SIGGRAPH 2019, 3rd place for Katharina Krösl for her dissertation "Simulating Vision Impairments in VR and AR", August 2019
  • CGI Best Short Paper Award 2019, 1st place to Kresimir Matkovic et al. for the article "Visual Analysis of Bird Moving Pattern", June 2019
  • EuroVis Best Ph.D. Dissertation Award 2019, 1st place to Thomas Mühlbacher for his dissertation "Human-Oriented Statistical Modeling: Making Algorithms Accessible through Interactive Visualization", June 2019
  • EuroVis Best Paper Award 2019, 1st place to Daniel Cornel et al. for the article “Interactive Visualization of Flood and Heavy Rain Simulations”, June 2019
  • INiTS Startup Prize, for startup spin-off "Visplore" by Harald Piringer and Thomas Mühlbacher, June 2019
  • Best Paper Award at the CESCG 2019, 1st place to Michaela Niedermayer with the contribution "Real-Time Shadows for Large-Scale Geospatial Visualization", April 2019
  • e-Award 2019: Education and training category, 1st place to Bettina Schlager for the "Fire Protection Training in VR" project, January 2019
  • IEEE Women in Engineering Best Student Paper Award at the CESCG 2018, 1st place to Silvana Zechmeister for the contribution "3D Annotations for Geospatial Desicion Support Systems", April 2018
  • Best Poster Award at IEEE VIS 2017 (VAST), 1st place to Holger Stitz, Samuel Gratzl and Marc Streit for the contribution "Provenance-Based Visualization Retrieval", October 2017
  • Best Poster - VAST Challenge Choice Award IEEE VIS 2017, 1st place to Silvana Podaras et al. for the article "Holistic Analysis of Heterogeneous Datasets", October 2017
  • PES Cedric K. Ferguson Medal to Georg M. Mittermeir, 2016
  • Mercure Innovation Prize from the Vienna Chamber of Commerce, 3rd place in the ICT / Technology category for the "HILITE - Interactive Light Planning" project, 2015
  • Mercure Innovation Prize of the Vienna Chamber of Commerce, 2nd place in the ICT / Technology category for the project "Visdom - Visual Action Planning in Flood Management", 2014
  • OCG Award 2014 to Johannes Sorger for the project "neuroMap - Interactive Graph-Visualization of the Fruit Fly's Neural Circuit", June 2014
  • e-Award 2014: Industry and Commerce category, 2nd place for the “Enervis” project, March 2014
  • e-Award 2014: Category T-Systems Innovation Award, 2nd place for the "Enervis" project, March 2014
  • ZIT CALL: IKT Vienna 2013, 1st place for the “SLOT Management Support Tools” project, September 2013
  • Honoring Prize 2012 from the Federal Minister for Science and Research to Harald Piringer, 2012
  • Science2business award 2012, 1st place for the project “Visual Computing for Computer-Aided Diagnostics and Operation Planning”, March 2012
  • eAward 2011 Lower Austria, 1st place for the project "Virtual Reality Biofeedback Training", January 2012
  • State Prize for Multimedia and e-Business, Jury Prize for the “Tactile Paintings” project, 2011
  • Lower Austria innovation award - organizational and marketing innovation category, 1st place for the “Virtual Design Process” project, 2009
  • Lower Austria innovation award - organizational and marketing innovation category, 2nd place for the "Virtual Fire Extinguisher" project, 2009
  • Long Night of Research 2008: 1st place for “excellent science communication”, November 2008
  • ZIT CALL: CO Operate enlarged, Vienna 2005, 2nd place for the project "Control Station Supplements", 2005
  • Medvis Award 2005 (Karl Heinz Höhne Prize) to André Neubauer for the project "Endoscopy for Preoperative Planning and Training of Endonasal Transsphenoidal Pituitary Surgery", 2005
  • IEEE Visualization Contest 2004, winner with the project "Interactive Visual Analysis of Hurricane Isabel", 2004

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b VRVis Annual Report 2018 .
  2. ↑ COMET program of the FFG
  3. ↑ VRVis Factsheet COMET K1
  4. ^ Institute for Computer Graphics and Algorithms at the Vienna University of Technology
  5. ^ Institute for Computer Vision and Representation at TU Graz
  6. ↑ Institute for Electrical Measurement Technology and Measurement Signal Processing at Graz University of Technology
  7. ^ Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence
  8. ^ Center for Usability Research and Engineering

Coordinates: 48 ° 13 ′ 58 "  N , 16 ° 24 ′ 49"  E