RAPID: Virtual Reality Cyberinfrastructure Enabling Data Visualization, Exploration, and Collaboration Among Distant Individuals

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The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced obstacles to many areas of astronomical research, especially topics requiring access to shared facilities and driven by interaction between scientists to interpret complex multi-dimensional data. A research team at Purdue University will accelerate production of the Virtual Reality (VR) data visualization platform Collaborative Astronomy VR, which leverages recent advancements in high-powered consumer hardware and cloud-based multi-user server architecture. Building this platform will globally connect individuals isolated by COVID-19 restrictions and provide virtual environments where they can actively engage with complex data and representations. The distributed application will be tailored for immersive visualization of supernova explosions and other topics in astronomy, but will have flexibility for potential use in other fields requiring visualization and interaction with 3D data environments. The work will contribute to a graduate student thesis and provide opportunities for undergraduate students, who will actively help develop and showcase the technology. A small instructional lab for physics and astronomy classes will also be created.The platform will be appropriate to visualize, explore, and collaborate with data made from observations and simulations of astronomical objects and phenomena. The flexible data ingestion pipeline will support multi-dimensional formats common to astronomical data, and will have clean up and optimization procedures to ensure data fidelity and fluid visualizations. This project fulfills the urgent need for scientists to navigate complex, multi-dimensional data collaboratively with distant individuals via scalable multiuser connectivity and broad platform compatibility. Collaborative Astronomy VR enables rapid and intuitive exploration of multidimensional data with on-the-fly scaling, rotation, and changing of perspective among many participants connected online simultaneously.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.