UH Hilo, UH Mānoa team wins national award for Hawaiian coral reef virtual reality app

A team of undergraduate students from the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo Department of Computer Science and UH Mānoa College of Engineering was awarded Best Visualization Showcase Award for the upcoming Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing 2020 Conference (PEARC20). The team’s project integrated three-dimensional models of Hawaiian coral reefs into an immersive virtual reality platform.

Originally scheduled in Portland, OR, but now switched to an online format due to the coronavirus, the PEARC20 takes place July 26 – 30, 2020, and will explore the current concepts of advanced research computing including modeling, simulation, and data-intensive computing.

The UH project, titled, “Exploration of Coral Reefs in Hawaiʻi through Virtual Reality: Hawaiian Coral Reef Museum VR,” showcases models that were generated from high-resolution surveys at long-term monitoring sites throughout the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. Thousands of images of coral reef habitats were collected by John Burns, a UH Hilo assistant professor of marine science, and his research team during ship-based research expeditions led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association.

Read the full story from University of Hawaii at Hilo here.