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Science 22 September 2006:
Vol. 313. no. 5794, p. 1729
DOI: 10.1126/science.313.5794.1729
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Special Feature

2006 Visualization Challenge

Jeff Nesbit1 and Monica Bradford2

Figure 1
The still life on the cover of this week's issue of Science is not a photograph but a computer-generated rendering of five famous mathematical surfaces. The result, created by Richard Palais of the University of California, Irvine, and graphic artist Luc Benard, is a virtuoso display of modern computer-graphics technology. (Notice how the glassy surfaces are reflected in one another and in the glass-covered, wood-grained tabletop.)

The image is the first-place winner in the illustration category of the 2006 Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge. Indeed, it is a prime example of why Science and the National Science Foundation (NSF) have jointly sponsored the visualization challenge every year since 2003. It is beautiful. It can capture the imagination of nonscientists. But it also represents a powerful new tool for research. As Benard and Palais wrote in their application, "Mathematicians have always needed to 'see' the complex concepts they work with in order to reason with them effectively. In the past, they conjured up mental images as best they could, but the wonders of computer graphics provide them with far more detailed pictures to think with." Or, as Felice Frankel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the challenge judges, put it, "The science community needs to discuss the enormous contribution good visual translations can bring to both communication and advancing the thinking behind the science. Critically thinking about what makes an honest and successful representation and raising our standards can only be beneficial for the science community as a whole."

The visualization challenge is intended to showcase and encourage this kind of work. This year, we invited submissions in five categories: photography, illustration, informational graphics, noninteractive multimedia, and interactive multimedia. Entries were screened by a committee from NSF and Science. Then an independent panel of experts in scientific visualization reviewed the finalists and selected the best, which appear in these pages.

We urge you and your colleagues to contribute to the next competition, details of which will be available at www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/scivis/index.jsp, and to join us in congratulating the winners and all the other entrants.

Susan Mason of NSF organized this year's challenge, Rhitu Chatterjee of Science's news staff wrote the text accompanying the images in the following pages, and Science's online editors Stewart Wills and Tara Marathe put together a special Web presentation at www.sciencemag.org/sciext/vis2006.

1Director, Office of Legislative and Public Affairs, NSF

2Executive Editor, Science

Panel of Judges

Figure 2

CREDIT: PAT OLMERT/NSF
Felice Frankel
Senior Research Fellow, FAS
Harvard University
Initiative in Innovative Computing
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Corinne Sandone
Medical Illustrator, Assistant Professor
Art as Applied to Medicine
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
Baltimore, Maryland
Donna J. Cox
Director, Visualization and Experimental Technologies
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
Urbana, Illinois
Michael Keegan
Assistant Managing Editor, News Art
The Washington Post
Washington, D.C.
Thomas Lucas
Thomas Lucas Productions Inc.
Ossining, New York




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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)