36
EVENT FORMAT
Lecture
2020
Januar y
12-2 3
Whole-Cell Visualization and Modeling
DESCRIPTION
Computer graphics technology can nowadays interactively display billions of atoms forming structures up to entire
biological organisms such as bacteria or Protista. The key insight that allows it is the following: while biology is im-
mensely complex, it is also very repetitive, which could be exploited in coping with
complexity. Life forms are internally composed of successful, frequently repeated evolutionary patterns. This
repetition, or multi-instancing in our terminology, can be observed on every level of spatial organization. Thanks to
such patterns, model construction of the entire life-form can be efficiently parallelized and consequently displayed
using fast rendering routines, where both stages are executed on the graphics hardware. In terms of complexity,
resulting scenes are of multi-scale, multi-instance, crowded, and dense three-dimensional nature. To effectively
convey such a complex structural arrangement, visualization algorithms need to cope with all of these structural
characteristics simultaneously. This need triggers the necessity of visualization algorithms that handle novel problems
in 3D occlusion management, color assignment, shading, or visual guidance. All these new algorithms lead to a
gradual democratization of computer graphics and visualization techniques for structural biology. Ultimately, the
advances lead to new exciting ways of how biology can be explored, understood, and communicated in the future.
SPEAKER Ivan Viola
CREDITS 2
Associate Professor of Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Science and
Engineering at KAUST