The Center for Innovation through Visualization and Simulation is located on the first floor of Powers Building at Purdue Calumet. The facililty was supported by U.S. Deparment of Energy Grant DE-NA000741 under the administration of the National Nuclear Security Administration. The center’s newly renovated facility opened its doors in Fall 2011. The facility features an Immersive Theater, Simulation Lab, Visualization Lab, Innovation Conference Room, and offices. CIVS houses graduate and undergraduate students, faculty, and staff, as well as a variety of research equipment.
IMMERSIVE THEATER
The Immersive Theater is a 70-seat theater featuring a large-scale 3-D virtual reality (VR) system known as the “Flex” that allows visitors to explore virtual worlds ranging from coal-fired boilers to inside the human brain. The Flex consists of four projection screens (three walls and one floor) that can transform from a 30-foot wide display for large audiences, to a 12′ x 9′ 3-D room for researchers and team collaborations. The system uses an optical tracking system that lets users interact with virtual environments.
SIMULATION LAB
The Simulation Lab is a student research area featuring high-end computer workstations and a variety of software packages for performing cutting-edge simulation research. The lab houses many graduate and undergraduate students who perform research for industry-sponsored projects, theses, senior-design, or independent study courses related to CIVS.
VISUALIZATION LAB
The Visualization Lab features a two-screen immersive projection system, high-end workstations, and specialized graphics software for the development of virtual reality and other 3-D visualization projects. Many CIVS projects combine simulation and visualization technologies to yield high-impact and easily-understandable results.
INNOVATION CONFERENCE ROOM
The Innovation Conference room is a high-end video conferencing facility that features 3-D high-resolution displays that can be connected to the Immersive Theater. The room serves as a space for local and remote conferencing, and project development meetings.
PEREGRINE 1 CLUSTER
PEREGRINE 1 is a compute cluster operated by the Rosen Center for Advanced Computing (RCAC). It was installed at the Purdue Calumet campus on December 25, 2009. It is the first major research cluster on the Calumet campus and represents a great step forward in Purdue Calumet’s ongoing plan to foster more local, cutting-edge research. Miner consists of 232 2-core Intel Xeon systems with either 4 or 6 GB RAM, 50 GB of disk, and 1 Gigabit Ethernet (1GigE) local to each node.
