UNC Asheville will gather artists, scientists and tech geeks to connect this fall and explore new ways to present scientific concepts to each other and the public using everything from video games to immersive domes. The AppliedVis 2006 Symposium will be held from 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 10, at the Haynes Conference and Technology Training Center on the A-B Tech Enka Campus.

Applied visualization, a growing industry in Western North Carolina, combines art and technology to communicate science in a visual way. The AppliedVis 2006 Symposium will focus on the interface of four major talent pools in the region: artists, scientists, educators and techies. Speakers and panelists from these groups will highlight the many applications for visualization, such as educational tools and disaster response, which result in economic development.

It is this interdisciplinary approach that put applied visualization on Asheville’s radar screen. Building on the 2004 and the 2005 conferences, AppliedVis 2006 will focus on getting this talent pool plugged into active projects. One new project with many opportunities is the Renaissance Computing Initiative (RENCI) Applied Visualization Lab at UNC Asheville. The lab has been established to develop high-resolution, near real-time weather models for disaster planning and response in our mountain region, which has a long history of devastating floods and mudslides. The project offers significant research opportunities to undergraduate and graduate students in the fields of environmental studies, computing, multimedia arts and sciences, education, geographical information systems, and environmental economics. When completed, the models will be put to use by city and county planners, emergency responders, educators and others.

UNC Asheville’s National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center (NEMAC) will host the AppliedVis 2006 Symposium. The symposium is sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and co-sponsored by RENCI, Education & Research Services, UNC Asheville’s Multimedia Arts & Sciences Department, Asheville’s Media Arts Project, Meet the Geeks, the City of Asheville and Buncombe County.

“The AppliedVis 2006 Symposium will be a live network of scientists with concepts to share, artists interested in using technology to tell stories, educators hungry for new ways to reach their audience, and computer savvy entrepreneurs that can bring it all together,” said Jim Fox, NEMAC’s director of operations. “We are looking for this creative group of people to discover innovative ways to work together and create new economic opportunities here in Asheville.”

Registration is $10 or free to students and faculty from UNC Asheville, A-B Tech and Warren Wilson. For more information about the AppliedVis 2006 Symposium, click on www.appliedvis.org or contact Pamela McCown at 828/670-7873 or pamela@education-research-services.org.