A Special Visit from Harvard University: Mapping the Human Brain

Throughout the academic year, UNIST organizes scholarly meetings and symposia that range in size and duration from multiday gatherings with auriences to individual lectures.

On July 15, Dr. Hanspeter Pfister, An Wang Professor of Computer Science in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University has met with several researchers at UNIST, including Prof. Won-Ki Jeong (School of Electrical and Computer Engineering) to promote quality science and scientific interchange.

During his visit, he gave a special lecture on visual computing in Connectomics, a new field in neuroscience that aims to apply biology and computer science to the grand challenge of determining the detailed neural circuitry of the brain.

Dr. Hanspeter Pfister, delivering a special lecture on Data Visualization at UNIST on July 15, 2015.

“I am amazed by how much this university has achieved over a relatively short period of time,” says Dr. Pfister after taking a guided tour of the UNIST Central Research Facilities (UCRF). He then adds, “This visit provides me a moment to realize how the rapid expansion, continued growth of the UNIST campus has captured the attention of scientists worldwide.”

Dr. Pfister is also an inventor of Vivaldi, computer programming language that allows non-CS majors to easily write high-performance parallel computing code. “I hope this seminar can increase the visibility of the CUDA-related research.”

The GPU Research Center at UNIST recognizes, rewards, and fosters collaboration with institutions at the forefront of parallel computing research. Moreover, it has been selected as NVIDIA CUDA Research Center since 2014 based on the vision, quality, and its pioneering work on high-performance visual computing using GPUs. The center, led by Prof. Jeong is conducting world-changing research by leveraging CUDA and NVIDIA GPUs.