Dr. JoAnn Kuchera-Morin is a composer, Professor of Media Arts and Technology and Music, and a researcher in multi-modal media systems content and facilities design In this information-rich age where large amounts of both structured and unstructured data are being generated, processed, and transformed at ever increasing rates, how does one master control, working with these data as if it were intuitive and second nature? While new techniques for analyzing such “big data” are being developed based on data mining and machine learning, the need for displaying, navigating, and interacting with big data has not yet been well addressed. We believe that the large-scale integration of advances in visual and auditory displays, expressive and natural input, computer vision, and machine learning, joined with an overarching focus on bringing them together in a comprehensive interactive systems design, will drive a new era of enhanced human intuition, understanding, and control of complex simulation and data systems. We believe that one of the most difficult tasks of understanding big data is the ability to quickly find new patterns in voluminous amounts of information and to have the ability to retain in one’s memory the information from pages and pages of numbers. If there is a way to translate this information into tangible visual and audio taxonomies, we may be able to retain this information much more readily. In this presentation Professor JoAnn Kuchera-Morin will discuss the computational framework that she and a team of researchers is developing at the AlloSphere Research Facility which will enable the transformation of big and complex data in the same way that a composer, artist or designer would unfold a work of art, or design a system. Dr. Morin’s visit to UMD is sponsored by the Future of Information Alliance (http://fia.umd.edu).