The university has established a major center for scientific visualization and virtual reality designed to provide companies throughout New York State with a significant competitive advantage in high-tech product development.

The New York State Center for Engineering Design and Industrial Innovation (NYSCEDII, pronounced nice-ity) is the only engineering design research center in the state that utilizes virtual reality (VR) and scientific visualization.

Its goal is to partner with industry, conduct leading-edge research on complex engineering design and train current and future employees in the emerging technologies that will govern the design and manufacture of products in the 21st century.

Funded by an initial $2.5 million from New York State and created through the support of New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Assemblymen Robin Schimminger and Paul Tokasz, as well as other Western New York legislators, NYSCEDII is one of just 20 such centers in the United States.

Expansion plans that now are under way—to be funded by anticipated further support from the Assembly—are expected make the center one of the top five in the nation by 2003.

SGI Inc., SUN Microsystems, Praxair, Moog and other companies have provided major support in the form of equipment, services and donations.

The Assembly also funded the creation of a Chair for Competitive Product and Process Design, to which Christina Bloebaum, NYSCEDII director and professor and chair of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, has been appointed.

"Visualization and VR help design engineers do more in less time," said Bloebaum. "But because of the major expense of the hardware and the infrastructure that the highest-end, visualization capabilities require, only the Fords and the Boeings of the world can afford to invest in this technology on their own," she said.

"The small and medium-sized companies are totally shut out. The purpose of NYSCEDII is to serve these companies, as well as larger corporations that do not have access to such facilities, conduct research that further exploits these technologies, and train current and future employees in using these cutting-edge tools."

UB President William R. Greiner noted that "NYSCEDII will provide the highest-end visualization capabilities and expertise that exist anywhere today. A world-class center in product design and industrial innovation, it will serve as a central resource for regional industries and for businesses throughout the state, enabling them to exponentially increase their competitive advantage, especially at the global level.

"We believe NYSCEDII is a major asset not only for UB and the Buffalo-Niagara region, but for all of New York State," Greiner added. "We are very grateful to the governor, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, Assemblymen Schimminger and Tokasz, and the entire state legislature for their outstanding support for this project."

Provost Elizabeth D. Capaldi noted that "visualization is a key to major scientific advances because it allows understanding of data sets too complex for the mind to comprehend any other way. We are delighted to be a leader in an area of such central importance for future scientific and engineering advances."

Focused on providing industry expertise and facilities to enable engineers to design, develop and improve products and systems more efficiently, NYSCEDII will serve the broadest range of New York State industries in sectors ranging from automotive and aerospace design to pharmaceuticals and immersive entertainment experiences.

It is seen as a major asset that will leverage existing computational and engineering strengths at UB and in industry leading to significant economic development and growth through retention and creation of jobs, strengthening of existing companies, spinoffs of new ones and the training of employees.

Companies working with NYSCEDII will benefit from visualization, simulation and Web-based collaborative multidisciplinary design, all of which are areas pioneered by researchers in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

During the past decade, the research efforts of Bloebaum and several other faculty members in the department have established UB as a leader in the field of multidisciplinary design and optimization, which is dedicated to optimizing the design and performance of complex systems, whether they are cars, airplanes or power plants. Such systems involve multiple disciplines, such as structures, control and aerodynamics.

Some of NYSCEDII's capabilities include:

• Rapid, virtual prototyping, allowing companies and researchers to explore a design's many possibilities in a fraction of the time it would take to build a real prototype—and at a fraction of the cost
• Computer-aided design, which allows engineers to design prototypes on computers, and 3D modeling
• Sensory and Haptic (touch and feel) VR capabilities, which allow participants to directly interact with simulations through the use of specialized equipment, such as datagloves and goggles
• Complex, real-time simulations
• Animation
• Immersive and high-end visualization for VR

Industries now investing in visualization and VR include automotive design, aircraft design, manufacturing, entertainment, and oil and gas exploration.

NYSCEDII already has entered into projects with such industrial partners as Praxair, Veridian, Moog, SGI Inc., SUN Microsystems, Fakespace Systems and Mechdyne.

What sets NYSCEDII apart from other centers is its ability to team up with its neighbor at UB, the Center for Computational Research.

"The coupling of NYSCEDII with CCR brings to UB and our partners something quite unique: that is, the ability to generate real-time simulations that we couldn't do otherwise," Bloebaum said.

While all visualization technologies are powered by supercomputers, such hardware is specifically customized for visualization; the infrastructure at CCR provides additional power designed for high performance computations.