artCenter | jpl | caltech data visualization summer program
Dashboard for monitoring of LIGO interferometer summarizes 10k telemetry channels to allow for real-time machine diagnostics and post-hoc scientific discovery.

2025 CALL FOR DATA+COLLABORATORS OPEN! | 2025 CALL FOR STUDENTS OPEN! | NEW 2025 MEDIA ART INTERN POSITION

about
How can interactive data visualization help scientists and engineers explore their data more effectively? How can computing, design, and art help maximize research results? How can speculative, artistic and critical approaches to data visualization expand fields of knowledge across science, engineering, art, design and the humanist study of science, technology and society (STS)? What methodologies are most effective for leveraging knowledge from these fields? Through an intensive 10-week summer R+D internship program we are developing new ways of addressing these issues.

The program brings faculty and researchers from Caltech, JPL and Art Center together to develop custom-built interactive data visualization tools for current science and engineering research at Caltech and JPL. We encode relational information with appropriate visual and interactive characteristics to help researchers interrogate, and ultimately gain new insight into data. In summer 2020, we are also launching a parallel art track focused on speculative, critical art and humanities STS approaches to understanding data. Through the program we are developing new interdisciplinary approaches to wicked science, art and humantiesproblems, leveraging art and design thinking and the latest methods from computing, User-Centered Design, interaction design, 3D graphics, media art and design, and science and technology studies.

In the News: Visualization Brings Data to Life | Dialing in to Noise | Visualization of fMRI Network Data | Data Visualization from Data to Discovery: Art Center + Caltech + JPL
past collaborations

MOSAIC VIEWER: AUTONOMOUS AGENT NETWORK SCHEDULER INTERFACE
| Joshua Vander-Hook, Federico Rossi, JPL Robotics

Engineering challenge: Visualizing the scheduling and performance of a set of multiple autonomous agents
Visualization challenge: Connecting complementing views of state of network/system to allow insight on operation. Visualization solution: An at-a-glance overview of system’s state by enabling a high-level synthesis, cross-comparison, and analysis on the agents’ health, performance, and other agent-centric metrics. Outcomes: LINK : http://alessandrafleck.com/project08.html INTERNS: Sandra Bae, Alessandra Fleck

FRXN8: GAS SAMPLING FRACTIONATION INSPECTOR
| Morgan Cable | Jason Rabinovitch, JPL Instrument Systems Implementation and Concepts

Engineering challenge: Verify composition of sampled gas from the upper atmosphere of venus.
Visualization challenge: Demonstrate the impact of hypervelocity on the composition samples given complex stochastic simmulations. Visualization solution: Concurrently display several panels with different resulting variables onto 1D and 2D projected compositions on top of spacecraft and collecting infrastructure geometry. Outcomes: LINK : http://alessandrafleck.com/project05.html INTERNS: David Abramov, Alessandra Fleck

COR3INSPECTOR: OMAN CORE EXPLORATION INTERFACE
| Bethany Ehlmann, Rebecca Greenberger, CALTECH GPS

Engineering challenge: Operationalization of kilometers of short-wave near-infrared micro- spectroscopy core images.
Visualization challenge: Facilitating research on the creation and modification of the oceanic crust and mantle. Visualization solution: Intuitive interface furnished to enable search of patterns, analysis of core sections, curation and annotation of found features, an interactive creation of complex multi-channel/multi-mineral maps. Outcomes: LINK : http://alessandrafleck.com/project06.html INTERNS: Aspen Hopkins, Alessandra Fleck

PIXLATE: PIXL INSTRUMENT FRONTEND
| David Flannery, JPL Planetary Chemistry and Astrobiology

Engineering challenge: Quickly viewing and analyzing microXRF data from MARS 2020 rover's PIXL instrument to enable research
Visualization challenge: Enabiing investigation of the composition, spatial patterns, and geological history of rock samples. Visualization solution: PIXLATE enables the generation, cross-comparison, and analysis of 2D element maps, x-ray spectra, & novel correlation diagrams. Outcomes: LINK : http://adriangalvin.space/pixelate : LINK : https://www.davidschurman.com/pixelate INTERNS: David Schurman, Adrian Galvin, Pooja Nair

MERLIN: FIRE PLUME DATABASE INTERFACE
| Michael Garay & Abigail Nastan, JPL MISR Group

Engineering challenge: Creating more widely accessible, explorable representations of NASA's MISR instrument fire plume data
Visualization challenge: Allowing researchers to filter, investigate, and intuitively visualize fire plume. Visualization solution: MERLIN allows researchers explore and drill down on the complete fire databased based on geography, plume height, fire radiative power, and other appurtenant metrics. Outcomes: NEWS: Seeing Science. JPL : LINK : https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/news/2018/10/15/seeing-science-using-visualizations-to-help-nasa-study-wildfires/ : LINK : http://adriangalvin.space/merlin INTERNS: Jarod Boone, Adrian Galvin, Pooja Nair

GRVIN: GRAIN ASSEMBLIES VISUALIZATION & ANALYSIS
| Dr. Jose Andrade, CALTECH CME

Engineering challenge: Helping researchers understand the underlying physics within granular materials through visualization.
Visualization challenge: Displaying clear 3D visualization of forces and other dimensions associated with grain experiments. Visualization solution: GRVIN enables efficient 3D visualization of experiments with affordances for both high level and grain-scale analysis. Outcomes: LINK : http://adriangalvin.space/grain INTERNS: Jeff Brewer, Adrian Galvin, Pooja Nair

MERIDIAN: MARS TELECOMMUNICATIONS RELAY ANALYSIS
| Victoria Scarffe-Barrett, NASA/JPL Mars Exploration Rover Team

Engineering challenge: Report, visualize, and offer an analysis tool for Opportunity rover telecommunications.
Visualization challenge: Visualizing and comparing predictions of telecomunnications across channels, times and locations. Visualization solution: A user-friendly system for analyzing telemetry predictions, allowing for quick informed decisions making, and optimization of path of the rover given all constraints. Outcomes: PUBLICATION: Towards Design Principles for Visual Analytics in Operations Contexts. Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. April 2018. ACM. : PDF : https://idl.cs.washington.edu/files/2018-Meridian-CHI.pdf : VIDEO : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyi6YPsqjU8 INTERNS: Mathen Conlen, Chelly Jin, Sara Stalla

CONSTELLATION: CYBERSECURITY SYSTEM IN REALTIME
| Dr. Arun Viswanathan, JPL Cyber Defense Engineering

Engineering challenge: Offer ground support from JPL's cybersecurity anomalies.
Visualization challenge: Visualize the health state of JPL's MSL network enabling anolmaly discovery and tracking Visualization solution: Tool that offers at a glance as well as detailed information of system, utilizing a plugin detection algorithms system, inside an interactive visualization to monitor and inspect anomalous attributes. INTERNS: Fred Hohman, Chelly Jin, Sara Stalla

SEGMENT3D: 3D CELL IMAGE SEGMENTATION
| Dr. Elliot Meyerowitz & Dr. Alex Cunha, Caltech Biology & CD3

Engineering challenge: Enabling visual segmentation of three dimensional plant cells embedded in volume.
Visualization challenge: Overcoming 2D limitations of interface while giving a sense of locatino, completion, and quality control. Visualization solution: A web based tool, that allows users to identify cell boundaries by brushing across tandem views of intersecting 2D slices within a carefully crafted 3D context with immediate result feedback. INTERNS: Beatrice Jin, Chelly Jin, Sara Stalla

SPACECRAFT TRAJECTORY DESIGN
| Jeffrey Stuart, Scott Evans, JPL Mission Design Navigation Group

Engineering challenge: Fly spacecraft efficiently to points of scientific interest.
Visualization challenge: Make high-dimensional trajectory design more tractable through interactive visualization. Visualization solution: A visual tool offers intuitive interaction with 3D and 2D representations of trajectories with quantitative data query options. Outcomes: NEWS : http://www.caltech.edu/news/visualization-brings-data-life-52802 INTERNS: Andrew Cox, Aprameya Mysore, Shixie

GLACIER ICE FLOW
| Dr. Mark Simons, Caltech Geophysics

Science challenge: Understand glacier flow and variability at different timescales. Visualization challenge: Visually represent the movement of ocean tides and inland Antarctic ice streams over varying timescales. Visualization solution: An interactive tool generates a unified visualization of velocity in space and time and supports exploration of quantitative data. INTERNS: Matthew Edwards, Aprameya Mysore, Shixie

3DDNA
| Dr. Mitch Guttman, Caltech Biology/Bioengineering

Science challenge: Understand the activity of genes in proximity to one another due to folds in the genome. Visualization challenge: Represent the 3D structure of DNA to support exploration of new relationships to its other functions. Visualization solution: An interactive platform visualizing the genome in 2D and 3D allows users to select and compare structures of interest at varying resolutions. Outcomes: NEWS : http://www.caltech.edu/news/visualization-brings-data-life-52802 INTERNS: Peter Polak, Aprameya Mysore, Shixie

ROVER PATH PLANNING
| John Wright & Frank Hartman, JPL Rover Surface Operations

Engineering challenge: Drive the Mars Rover efficiently to points of scientific interest. Visualization challenge: Streamline rover path planning by simultaneously visualizing terrain data, rover stability, time and distance. Visualization solution: An intuitive tool that reduces cognitive load and enables drivers to quickly sketch, analyze and output an optimal path. Outcomes: CASE-STUDY : http://www.peiliew.com/rsketch-1 INTERNS: John Thompson, Pei Liew, Alex Sciutto

CELL LINES
| Dr. Michael Elowitz, Caltech Biology

Science challenge: Understand the activity of related cells in expanding colonies. Visualization challenge: Track the lineage of gene expression in cells over time with overlapping data in movies, gene expression levels and cell lineage hierarchies. Visualization solution: A streamlined visual tool for researchers to dynamically track, filter and compare gene expression patterns across multiple data sets at once. Update: *Newer version now named cellerie Outcomes: LIVE-PORTAL : http://cellerie.caltech.edu INTERNS: Alex Sciutto, Pei Liew

NED INTERACTIVE INTERFACE
| Dr. Joseph Mazzarella, Caltech IPAC

Science challenge: Understand how the cosmic environment effects star formation and active galactic nuclei. Visualization challenge: Intuitively visualize spatial relataionships and parametric data cataloged in the NED (NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database) collection of all known objects in the universe. Visualization solution: An interactive web tool that represents the universe in 3D, allows users to select, filter and compare regions of interest. Outcomes: CASE-STUDY : http://www.peiliew.com/n3d INTERNS: Thomas Lu, Pei Liew, Alex Sciutto

LIGO
| Dr. Rana Adhikari, Caltech Physics

Science Challenge: Discover gravitational waves. Engineering challenge: Understand the state of a hyper-sensitive laser interferometer, instrumented with 10,000 sensors. Visualization challenge: Summarize 10k telemetry channels to allow for real-time machine diagnostics and post-hoc scientific discovery. Visualization Solution: A streamlined interface that identifies outliers, visually codifies data channels (including video+sound), and enables pattern discovery. Outcomes: NEWS : https://eands.caltech.edu/2015/03/19/dialing-in-to-noise/ : VIDEO : https://vimeo.com/120269583 INTERNS: Bill Lindmeier, Stephen Bader, Luna Lie

FLUID DYNAMICS
| Dr. Beverley McKeon, Caltech Aerospace

Science Challenge: Manipulate wall-bounded fluid flow to improve vehicle performance. Visualization problem: Visualize of the building blocks of wall turbulence, an otherwise apparently chaotic flow phenomenon. Visualization solution: Specially-designed software permits a single building block, essentially a three-dimensional, propagating wave, to be visualized using velocity vectors and particle traces. The flow history identified via particle traces reveals rotational structure. Outcomes: VIDEO : https://vimeo.com/120269583

NEUTRON SCATTERING
| Dr. Brent Fultz, Caltech Physics

Science challenge: Understand heat transfer through solid crystals. Visualization problem: Present a 5-dimensional space showing (3 dimensions of momentum, energy and spin), and allow interaction and dynamic filtering. Visualization solution: An interactive tool to explore the volume and provides control over the amount of information seen at one time. Outcomes: VIDEO : https://vimeo.com/120269582 INTERNS: Ju Park, Stephen Bader, Luna Lie
people

Visualization Team

Program Leaders and Advisors

Krys Blackwood | Scott Davidoff | Maggie Hendrie | Santiago Lombeyda | Hillary Mushkin

Summer Visualization Students

talented graduate and undergraduate students selected from computer science and design programs nationwide. Call for Students

Caltech and JPL science and engineering groups

faculty, postdocs and graduate students selected from an RFP. Call for Data
how does the program work?
A team of six students (1 artist, 2 designers, 3 creative computer scientists) work on 3 Caltech/JPL data visualization projects for ten weeks. The designers work on all three projects; each computer scientist is devoted to a single project. The artist will develop a separate, parallel project focused on 1-3 of the projects. The interns receive mentorship in visualization, computing,design and critical art from the program advisors.

In the first few weeks, the visualization team gains an appropriate understanding of the science and engineering data through intensive discussions with researchers and exploration of the data. Thereafter, researchers meet with students weekly to explain their data, discuss their needs and provide feedback on the relevance of design iterations to their research and data. Students also meet weekly with the visualization advisors to present work in progress, ask questions, and get feedback. At the end of the summer, researchers have operating bespoke visualization software which they can use to further their research. In tandem, we also will have developed critical or speculative media artwork informed by the visualization research process.

SAMPLE CASE STUDY: CELL LINES [+]


CELL LINES was the name of solution conceptualized and implemented by 2015 Summer Data Visualization Program interns Alex Sciutto, Pei Liew for Michael Elowitz, professor of Biology and Bioengineering and Sahand Hormoz (former Elowitz Lab postdoc) at Caltech, for the purpose of understanding and analysing cell genealogy experimebtal observations. This Case Study offers a glance at the process that lead to creation of the current tool cellerie.
During the first two weeks of the program, lead by the design team, interns conduct intricate interviews with our stakeholders (project principal investigators and all collaborators with a shared interest) utilizing user experience methodologies. This includes understanding their current process, witnessing how users currently do their research or interact with their data, and ultimately trying to understand what outcomes are best expected of the analysis.
Ideation of creative ways of tackling the major needs of the stakeholder follows, alongside of wrangling and digestion of the data.
The following 4-6 weeks interns go through an interactive process of design generation, fast prototype development as based on real data, testing with the stake holders, and work sessions with the program mentors.
As the process comes along, through the interaction with actual users and field experts, some directions evolve drastically, while some others are discarded.
Weekly meetings with stake holders as well as mentors allow interns to expose and refine their designs.
Designs lead to storyboards outlining possible interaction methodologies.
Utilizing off the shelf tools and fast prototyping software, interns generate visual models exploring a wide range of visual possibilities.
Mixed paper and screen prototyping enables interns to quickly test interaction hypothesis, without having to design blindly or creating intricate working prototypes.
The complete process leads to a final design, for which the interns build a fully workign prototype, based on the data delivered at the beginning of the program.
The final result is working software, targeted to solve the needs of current hard scientific projects.
Results offered layered solutions that tackle quick and intuitive inspection, as well as in depth analysis.
sample schedule

Week 1-2

Introductory meeting

  • Data visualization program mentors give researchers an introduction to the program methodology
  • Research groups present research + visualization challenges to interns and data visualization program mentors
    		•

    Researchers Present Project + Discussion

  • Researchers give more detail to interns
  • What are you trying to accomplish in your research?
  • What are current visualization methods? Show examples
  • What limitations are you trying to get beyond?
  • Format of the data - how big is it, file format, how to access it?
    		•

    Follow up interviews

    Interns ask researchers in-depth follow-up questions and observe them working with the data as they "think aloud"

    Weeks 2-9
  • Weekly Meetings
  • Students present their work in progress and request feedback
  • Researchers discuss their needs with interns and provide feedback on relevance of design iterations to their research and data
  • Advisors provide feedback and guidance to students
    		•

    Week 10
  • Final Presentation
  • Data handoffs: students deliver code of working prototype and user guide
    		•
    call for students
    Call for Interns: Help Us Solve Hard Problems with Visualization

    We want talented, passionate, self-motivated students with skills and experience in data visualization, or disciplinary experience in Computer Science, Interaction Design, Human-Computer Interaction, Media Art, Speculative Media Design or related disciplines.

    SPRING-FALL 2025-2026 | CLOSED
    [CS TEAM MEMBERS]

    dataviz, HCI, computer science (modular coding), web based coding, ability to anticipate and adapt to new types of code; discrete math, graph theory, statistics; physics.

    SPRING-FALL 2025-2026 | CLOSED
    [DESIGN TEAM MEMBERS]

    Interaction design, user centered design, graphic design, 3D animation, collaborative coding and/or design.

    SUMMER 2025 | CLOSED
    [MEDIA ART TEAM MEMBERS]

    Collaborative art practice, media art, speculative design, STS studies (science, technology and society)

    Students should be interested in working on research quality problems. Students will be the primary communicators with scientists and engineers; students' understanding of the data and visualization challenges will contribute significantly to the scope and shape of the project.

    This is an academic research collaboration requiring commitment to the program, ability to work in teams, expertise in your field, and willingness to be nimble and expand your horizons.

    We are currently developing a Fall 25+Winter/Spring 26 remote internship program, following similar methodology and goals as our summer program (including mentors and access to science partners); but to take place as an Independent Study at your [US Based] university of origin. This program would NOT have the citizenship or permanent resident requirements, it would NOT be a paid internship, and you must enroll as INDEPENDENT STUDY at home institution with the support of a Professor at your institution.

    DATES

    28 weeks | Septemeber 2025 - June 2026

    ELIGIBILITY

    _ Applicants must be continuing students (GPA ≥3.0). Students graduating before fall 2020 are not eligible to apply.

    _ Work at NASA/JPL requires that students are US citizens or permanent residents.

    APPLICATION

    Interested students should send CV (PDF, +Portfolio if relevant) and a 1-page application to datavis(at)caltech.edu Applications should include the following information:


    25-26 | CLOSED
    [CS APPLICATION DEADLINE]
    receving applications starting December 1, 2025 | until May 18, 2025, or until positions filled.

    25-26 | CLOSED
    [DESIGN APPLICATION DEADLINE]
    receving applications starting January 1, 2025 | until May 18, 2025, or until positions filled.

    2025 | CLOSED
    [MEDIA ART APPLICATION DEADLINE]
    receving applications starting January 1, 2025 | until March 8, 2025, or until positions filled.

    call for data

    Call for Collaborators+Data: We Want Hard Problems to Solve with Visualization

    We are looking for people and projects that would benefit from innovative data visualization approaches. Ideal projects are those that already have large, complex, or interesting data sets that would benefit from creative design-informed visualization approaches involving interactivity, animation and still design formats. Clear, well defined problems with tangible outcomes that may be achieved within the limits of the summer are most appropriate.

    How does funding work?

    The program funds two (of three) students on every project team, as well as the time and costs for mentors. Researchers partners are required to fund one additional intern at SURF/JPL SIP rates.

    DATES

    28 weeks | September 2025 - June 2026

    APPLICATION

    Interested researchers neet to submit proposal [25-26 CALL FOR COLLABORATORS+DATA FORM] by TUESDAY March 10, 2025, 8:59PM.PST. Applications include questions regarding the following:

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