Graphics Reference
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another alum, created Pong, one of the irst commercially successful video
games while working at Atari.
Utah's campus in Salt Lake City nestles in the bosom of a gigantic crater-
shaped hollow surrounded by jagged, mountain peaks that glow white in the
winter and shimmer with lush green foliage in the summer. To someone used
to the less dramatic landscapes of the east coast of the United States, Salt Lake
City resembles a moonscape. Like a multi-million dollar lunar research station,
Utah's world-renowned Scientiic Computing and Imaging Institute (called the
SCI Institute), founded in 1994, sits proudly on the edge of campus, its banks
of windows looking over the surrounding jagged rim of mountain peaks.
The research at Utah's SCI institute aims to converge the ields of medical
imaging, visualization, scientiic computing, and Big Data research. There's
something in the air in Utah that gives one a feeling that anything is possible.
The state remains sparsely populated. It's a skier's and hiker's paradise, home
to several national state parks and a series of scenic highways that thread
through pristine stretches of wilderness.
In a peaceful ofice whose windows were lined with orchids, I sat down
with Chris Johnson, founding Director of the SCI Institute. Chris was calm
and unhurried. Chris's polite, laid back demeanor belied the fact that over the
years, he has won a string of awards for his work in biomedical computing and
imaging, most recently, the IEEE Charles Babbage Award, computing's version
of an Oscar for lifetime achievement. Despite my sudden appearance at his
Institute's front desk, he was courteous and took the time to give me a tour of
the Institute's sparkling new four-story building.
I asked Chris the key question: Will there ever be commercial design soft-
ware to design and improve human body parts? “Maybe,” he said.
Chris elaborated, “Right now, the body is too complicated from a geometric
point of view, and CAD models are based on regular geometries.” Translation:
Our bodies are so complex, made up of a broad range of materials and intri-
cately shaped tissues, bones and blood vessels, that it's currently impossible
to digitally capture enough detail with existing software and hardware to 3D
print real, living organs.
Chris sees what he calls a “great merging” between medical imaging, big
data, video game animation, and conventional computer-aided design software.
Research scientists at SCI explore (amongst other things) how to capture and
simulate the human body in digital form, software development that will
someday play a critical role in the development of 3D printing living tissue.
