Call for Participation

*** Submissions due January 15, 2016 ***

Does your research generate, analyze, and/or visualize data using advanced digital resources? Visualizations of your work could reach millions of people, amplifying its greater societal impacts! CADENS is looking for scientific data to visualize or existing data visualizations to weave into larger documentary narratives in a series of fulldome digital films and TV programs aimed at broad public audiences.

CADENS (The Centrality of Advanced Digitally ENabled Science) is a National Science Foundation-supported project to increase digital literacy and inform the general public about computational and data-enabled discovery. It is led by Donna Cox, director of the Advanced Visualization Laboratory at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, which has created data-driven visualizations seen by millions of people in productions for planetariums, museums, and science television programs. Other project collaborators are Thomas Lucas, producer/director of more than 30 major science documentary films, and the Blue Waters and Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) projects.

CADENS provides a unique opportunity for researchers employing advanced digital methods to integrate their research findings into a story of interest to the public. Input from writers, museum distributors, educators, and other stakeholders help determine subject matter. CADENS has already completed one of twelve documentaries: Solar Superstorms narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch.

The CADENS team is in the process of producing and distributing 11 more documentaries in two formats:

Ultra-high-resolution digital dome films that will premiere at giant screen fulldome theaters in museums, planetariums, and science centers and will be scaled for global distribution to smaller theaters and academic institutions;

High-definition documentary programs to be distributed to popular domestic and international television outlets including Hulu, Amazon, PBS, and NSF online television.

The process for selecting scientific data and visualizations to be included in CADENS projects is unlike typical proposal review procedures. This selection process involves visualization experts, a science advisory committee, and other stakeholders in an ongoing process to consider a variety of science stories. Examples of the type of science that will be considered for the above CADENS documentaries include, but are not limited to:

  • Computational biophysics, medical and disease modeling
  • Computational astrophysics, e.g. protoplanetary disks
  • Water/energy sustainability using observational data or computational models
  • Digital social science, census analysis or computational economic modeling
  • Computational geoscience including oceanography, hurricanes and climate change

The deadline to submit your application is January 15, 2016.

Answers to frequently asked questions are provided here. Or you can contact cadens@ncsa.illinois.edu.