Simulations are an integral part of computational science. Simulations are characterized by a particular set of inputs and a multitude of outputs. Understanding the dependency of the outputs from the inputs is key for understanding the underlying phenomena that are being modeled. In this talk I will try to give a characterization of such general input/output systems and present several tools we have built for different applications, ranging from fisheries science to medical imaging to fluid simulation. I will try to make the case that visual support greatly facilitates the understanding of these complex systems. I will also make the case that mathematical modeling and empirical approaches must go hand-in-hand to create effective visualization tools.

• Case Studies
• Tuner
• FluidExplorer
• Vismon
• Abstraction
• Optimization
• Partitioning
• (data) Fitting
• Steering
• Sensitivity
• Uncertainty
• Challenges
• Sampling
• Rendering / Display
• Cognition
• Design
• Ethnographic

The focus here will be the abstraction of tasks and data in the realm of parameter exploration.

• Thomas Torsney-Weir, Ahmed Saad, Torsten Möller, Britta Weber, Hans-Christian Hege, Jean-Marc Verbavatz, and Steven Bergner, "Tuner: Principled Parameter Finding for Image Segmentation Algorithms Using Visual Response Surface Exploration," IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, vol. 17, issue 12, no. 10, 12/2011. [Link]
• Stefan Bruckner, Torsten Möller, "Result-Driven Exploration of Simulation Parameter Spaces for Visual Effects Design," IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (Proceedings Visualization / Information Visualization 2010), vol. 16, no. 6, pp. 1467--1475, Nov.-Dec. 2010. [Link]
• Maryam Booshehrian, Torsten Möller, Randall M. Peterman, Tamara Munzner, "Vismon: Facilitating Analysis of Trade-Offs, Uncertainty, and Sensitivity In Fisheries Management Decision Making," Computer Graphics Forum, Volume 31 Issue 3, June 2012, Pages 1235-1244. [Link]

Simon Fraser University

Torsten Möller is a professor at the School of Computing Science at Simon Fraser University. He received his PhD in Computer and Information Science from Ohio State University in 1999 and a Vordiplom (BSc) in mathematical computer science from Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany. He is a senior member of IEEE and ACM, and a member of Eurographics. His research interests include the fields of Visualization and Computer Graphics, especially the mathematical foundations thereof.

He is co-director of the Graphics, Usability and Visualization Lab (GrUVi). He is the appointed Vice Chair for Publications of the IEEE Visualization and Graphics Technical Committee (VGTC). He has served on a number of program committees and has been papers co-chair for IEEE Visualization, EuroVis, Graphics Interface, and the Workshop on Volume Graphics as well as the Visualization track of the 2007 International Symposium on Visual Computing. He has also co-organized the 2004 Workshop on Mathematical Foundations of Scientific Visualization, Computer Graphics, and Massive Data Exploration as well as the 2010 Workshop on Sampling and Reconstruction: Applications and Advances at the Banff International Research Station, Canada. He is a co-founding chair of the Symposium on Biological Data Visualization (BioVis). In 2010, he was the recipient of the NSERC DAS award. He received best paper awards from IEEE Conference on Visualization (1997), Symposium on Geometry Processing (2008), and EuroVis (2010), as well as two second best paper awards from EuroVis (2009, 2012).