CHAPEL HILL, NC, January 14, 2008 – The Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) will host an open house for its new engagement center at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill on Thursday, Feb. 7, featuring state-of-the-art visualization technology and collaboration tools.
RENCI at UNC Chapel Hill is located in the ITS Manning Building on the UNC campus, 211 Manning Drive. The open house will run from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Pay parking is available in the Dogwood Lot on Manning Drive across from UNC Hospitals. Admission is free and refreshments will be available.
Faculty, staff, students and other visitors will have the chance to learn about RENCI research collaborations and will be able to tour three research environments that use cutting-edge visualization and collaboration technologies. Those environments are:
- The Showcase Room, with a 15-foot tilted multi-projector dome display for interacting with data in an immersive 180-degree field of view.
- The Social Computing Room, that uses 12 projectors to create a 360-degree display for virtual, immersive and interactive experiences.
- The Tele-immersion Room, with a 10-foot x 5-foot rear-projection screen for 3D stereoscopic viewing and long-distance collaboration at more than four times HD resolution.
With the opening of RENCI at UNC Chapel Hill, faculty and staff on the UNC campus have access to RENCI resources, staff, and collaborators and have the opportunity to contribute to ongoing research projects of campuswide, statewide and national scope. Members of the UNC community can also take the lead on new multidisciplinary research efforts that utilize RENCI’s visualization, computing and data resources.
“The open house is a way to show the UNC community what we have here and to get them thinking about possible partnerships with RENCI,” said Ruth Marinshaw, engagement center director for the RENCI at UNC Chapel Hill facility. “RENCI’s mission is to bring together multidisciplinary groups and high-end technology resources for projects that will have long-lasting impact. We know that the UNC Chapel Hill site will play an important role in this mission, and we are very excited about the possibilities.”
RENCI at UNC Chapel Hill opened its doors in late 2007 and is part of the RENCI statewide virtual organization that will soon include eight sites. RENCI was founded in 2004 as a major collaboration of Duke University, North Carolina State University, UNC Chapel Hill and the state of North Carolina. RENCI’s anchor site is at 100 Europa Drive in Chapel Hill. Other engagement facilities are located in the Health Science Library on the UNC campus, on NC State’s Centennial Campus, and at East Carolina University (Greenville), UNC Charlotte, and UNC Asheville. An engagement center on the Duke campus is expected to open this spring.
For directions to the open house, please see http://www.renci.org/unc/about/location.php.
RENCI…Catalyst for Innovation
The Renaissance Computing Institute brings together computer and discipline scientists, artists, humanists, industry leaders, entrepreneurs, state leaders and educators for collaborations designed to reshape science, the economy, the state of North Carolina and the world. RENCI leverages its expertise and resources in leading edge computing, networking and data technologies to ignite innovation and find solutions to previously intractable problems. Founded in 2004 as a major collaborative venture of Duke University, North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the state of North Carolina, RENCI is a statewide virtual organization. For more, see www.renci.org.
