About Us

CVDI is part of the National Science Foundation Industry-University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC) program that promotes high-quality industry-relevant research and direct technology transfer of ideas, research results, and technology to the U.S. industry.

The Center brings a consortium of researchers and students across multiple universities to advance research and innovation in big data with respect to the Internet of Things – specifically how large-scale multi-dimensional datasets are analyzed and interpreted using advanced data mining, and visual and perceptual techniques for decision-makers. For more information on NSF IUCRCs please visit https://iucrc.nsf.gov

CVDI's mission is to research and develop next-generation technologies in data science, and big data analytics, including visual analytics, augmented intelligence, and decision informatics to enable decision-makers in government and industry to fundamentally improve the way their organization’s information is interpreted and analyzed. CVDI will bring together, analytic, visual, and perceptual techniques by advancing the state-of-the-art in the research fields of Information Visualization, Visual Analytics, and Automated Analysis.

CVDI’s value proposition offers a low-cost, low-risk venue for the industry to validate the early-stage innovation with the involvement of major research university faculty, post-doctorate scholars, and students.

• Become a world leader in big data and data science by creating exceptional core competencies across multiple areas.
• Create a network of diverse and complementary research sites, both here in the US and abroad, that deliver extensive technical expertise to industrial partners and the research community.
• Accelerate the creation and transfer of technology to industry and commercial products.
• Attract high-quality student talent, and produce a future workforce that has a broad industrial perspective in their research that has the potential to benefit the local and national economy.

The Center for Visual and Decision Informatics strives to become a world leader in creating a win-win partnership between industry and academia in the big data space. UL Lafayette, Drexel University, SBU, UVA, UNCC, and Tampere University along with other future academic partners, will cooperate with the objective to accelerate research, innovation, technology transfer, and student training in the big data space. The purpose of this concerted effort is to continue the ongoing efforts and make CVDI the most sought after research and development consortium for next-generation visual analysis and decision support tools and techniques.

CVDI researchers bring both synergy and complementary data science and big data research initiatives in the areas of data acquisition and management, analytics, visualization & human interaction, and applications to drive innovation in visual and decision informatics. The research topics within the analytics domain include visual analytics, predictive analytics, augmented intelligence, data summarization, deep learning, complex systems analysis, evolutionary optimization, agent-based models and simulation, privacy-preserving learning, and meta-learning. New visualization and human-computer interaction topics include interactive visualization, human-computer interaction modeling, cognitive assistance, and immersive analytics. Topics in data management include big data platforms, knowledge organization, data fusion and integration, parallel processing of massively large datasets, and green computing. The Center also brings complementary expertise in health informatics, biomedicine, energy, computational law, education, cybersecurity, disaster management, advanced manufacturing, psychology, and environmental science.

• CVDI’s research agenda and projects are driven by IAB organizational needs.
• Expand innovation capacity through collaboration, knowledge transfer, and access to leading-edge technology innovations, and world-class research infrastructure.
• A low-cost, low-risk venue that offers a proven and successful collaboration model built on decades of best practices and a demonstrated ROI.
• Access to researchers and future workforce that have experience working in industry-relevant research.
• ROI is maximized by the high level of IAB investment.

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• Completed 128 IAB – funded projects in 10 years with 220 undergrad and graduate students
• Total center funding topped $16.9 million in Y1 -Y10 in NSF research funding, including supplements
• Nominated by industry members for 2 technology breakthroughs
• Published 277 CVDI-related papers, filed 111 invention disclosures and completed 6 licensing agreements
• Organized first-ever IEEE international conference on Big Data
• Coordinate two annual hackathons - CajunCodeFest and the Philly Code Fest
• Recognized as the first and only NSF IUCRC to focus on Big Data
• Successfully added an international academic research site in 2015 -Tampere University in Finland
• Moved to Phase II of the IUCRC program on March 1, 2017, adding the University of Virginia, StonyBrook University, and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte