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Carnegie Mellon hosting first conference to explore scientific use of gigapixel imagery

PITTSBURGH—Scientists who are pioneering the use of gigapixel imagery will discuss how they are leveraging this new technology Nov. 11-13 at the first Fine International Conference on Gigapixel Imaging for Science, hosted by Carnegie Mellon University.

The deadline for early conference registration is Sept. 13. To register online and to view the latest program schedule, visit http://gigapixelscience.org/. The conference, sponsored by the Fine Foundation of Pittsburgh, will focus on new technologies for producing electronic images that contain billions of pixels and can be studied interactively in great detail.

Keynote speakers Alan Eustace, Google senior vice president for engineering; Pete Worden, director of NASA's Ames Research Center; and Mark Bauman, executive vice president of National Geographic Television, will discuss the scientific uses of gigapixel imagery, as well as its potential for educating students and the general public about science. The technology already is being used to create images of everything from a large archaeological dig to a microscopic image of a fly.

For the past three years, the Fine Foundation has sponsored a series of workshops that have trained more than 100 scientists from around the world on the use of one particular imaging system, called GigaPan. Geologists, primatologists, paleontologists, ecologists and scientists from many other disciplines have participated in these workshops and have become pioneers and innovators in the use of gigapixel imagery. Many will be returning to Carnegie Mellon to share their experiences at the November conference.

GigaPan, a combination of a robotic camera mount and a software package, was developed by CMU Associate Professor of Robotics Illah Nourbakhsh's CREATE Lab and the NASA Ames Intelligent Robotics Group, with support from Google. The system can take hundreds of photos of a given scene and then electronically stitch the photos into a seamless panorama. Users share these images at the GigaPan website, http://www.gigapan.org, and Google Earth features a GigaPan layer.

Follow the School of Computer Science on Twitter @SCSatCMU.

About Carnegie Mellon University: Carnegie Mellon (www.cmu.edu) is a private, internationally ranked research university with programs in areas ranging from science, technology and business, to public policy, the humanities and the arts. More than 11,000 students in the university's seven schools and colleges benefit from a small student-to-faculty ratio and an education characterized by its focus on creating and implementing solutions for real problems, interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation. A global university, Carnegie Mellon's main campus in the United States is in Pittsburgh, Pa. It has campuses in California's Silicon Valley and Qatar, and programs in Asia, Australia, Europe and Mexico. The university is in the midst of a $1 billion fundraising campaign, titled "Inspire Innovation: The Campaign for Carnegie Mellon University," which aims to build its endowment, support faculty, students and innovative research, and enhance the physical campus with equipment and facility improvements.

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