Lecture: The Future of the Planetarium – Mark SubbaRao, Feb 23

Presented by the Research Computing Center

Mark SubbaRao, Space Visualization Laboratory Director at the Adler Planetarium

Monday, February 23rd, 2:00-3:30PM

Crerar Library, Kathleen A. Zar Room

The first planetarium was developed over 90 years ago.  Today thousands of planetaria exist all across the world.  This talk will argue that the future of the planetarium is to make the transformation to a big data visualization facility.  After reviewing the state of the art in planetarium visualization the talk will conclude with a invitation for University researchers to visualize their data sets at the Adler Planetarium.

Speaker Biography:  Mark SubbaRao is the Director of the Space Visualization Laboratory at the Adler Planetarium.  He received his bachelors degree in engineering physics at Lehigh University and his Ph.D from Johns Hopkins University in astrophysics.  His Ph.D thesis concerned the characterization and evolution of the luminosity function of galaxies.  After obtaining his degree he worked as a post doctoral researcher at the University of Chicago on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey a project to make a 3D map of the Universe.  He has led the development of major exhibition galleries at the Adler such as “The Universe:  A Walk Through Time and Space” and has also produced, written and directed a number of stereoscopic videos and full-dome planetarium shows.  These include the planetarium shows “Welcome to the Universe” and “Cosmic Wonder.”  His visualizations have been widely shown in print and television.  He was part of a team that created a first-prize-winning visualization in the 2011 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge.  He was also on a team that was awarded the best visualization at XCEDE 2013.  Dr. SubbaRao chairs the international Planetarium Society’s Task Force on Science and Data Visualization, which seeks to realize the potential of the planetarium as a scientific visualization tool.

For more information contact RCC at info@rcc.uchicago.edu or 773-795-2667