Last modified: Friday, January 14, 2011
IU fellowships support collaborative projects in informatics and digital arts and humanities
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 14, 2011
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- When you imagine applications for computational science, solving physics equations or mapping genes probably comes to mind before artistic expression or humanities research. But today, computational science and informatics aren't just for scientists. Technology also holds great potential for scholars in fields of study such as literature, languages, and history, as well as music and fine arts.
Newly awarded fellowship grants from the Data to Insight Center, part of the Pervasive Technology Institute (PTI), and the IU Institute for Digital Arts and Humanities (IDAH) are supporting the important coupling of technology with arts and humanities research and creative activity.
The yearlong fellowships support collaborative projects in which scholars from the arts and humanities work together with computer scientists and informaticians to advance an area of humanities research.
This year's fellowship recipients are:
- Computational Linguist Sandra Kuebler and Jewish Studies' Ayelet Weiss received $49,000 to support their MAP-H project. The goal of the project is to develop a new method of analyzing the language of Hebrew learners to determine their proficiency at a very granular level. This novel approach is based on computational linguistics technology, which will also helps identify a learner's problem areas in order to improve grammar and fluency.
- Associate Professor of Fine Art Margaret Dolinsky, with Eric Wernert and William Sherman of the University Information Technology Services (UITS) Advanced Visualization Lab, received nearly $50,000 to support a project entitled Virtual Reality: Recording and Recreating Real-Time Experiences for Art and Science. The project will model a system and methodology for capturing, annotating, and re-experiencing interactive virtual reality artworks. These methods hold promise not only within the realm of the visual and performing arts, but also for training simulations and scientific visualization.
"The fellowships are given to individuals and projects we believe have the potential to ultimately attract larger-scale federal grants, and to contribute significantly to the research goals of the Data to Insight Center and Indiana University," said Beth Plale, director of the PTI Data to Insight Center and professor of computer science in the IU Bloomington School of Informatics and Computing. "Investment in these types of collaborative efforts keep Indiana University on the leading edges of both technology and humanities research."
The Data to Insight Center has awarded more than $425,000 in research fellowships during the 2010-2011 academic year to support collaborative research in technology, science, and the humanities.
About the Data to Insight Center
The Data to Insight Center (D2I) undertakes research to harness the vast stores of digital data being produced by modern computational resources, allowing scientists and companies to make better use of these data and find the important meaning that lies within them. D2I creates tools and visualizations for working with very large data sets, develops methods to ensure data provenance (quality and authenticity), and builds methods for listing and discovering data sets. D2I is part of Pervasive Technology Institute (PTI) at Indiana University. Funded by a $15 million grant from the Lilly Endowment, Inc., PTI is dedicated to the development and delivery of innovative information technology and policy to advance research, education, industry, and society.
About the Institute for Digital Arts and Humanities
The Institute for Digital Arts and Humanities (IDAH) links a network of disciplinary experts, faculty, and support staff who work in interdisciplinary teams on collection-building, tool-building, and the development of appropriate methods for study and analysis of collections. The expertise of the faculty from the School of Informatics and Computer Science, School of Library and Information Science, and highly qualified professional staff at the Digital Library Program and University Information Technology Services work together with the disciplinary expertise of the arts and humanities faculty to redefine research and scholarship in the arts and humanities on the IU Bloomington campus.
