Initiative in Innovative Computing (IIC) Harvard University

Most scientists draw pictures to communicate their ideas to each other. Goodman’s work on star formation, along with work in other fields, reveals that the seemingly qualitative world of pictures often leads to quantitative insight. This talk will tell how and why the Astronomical Medicine group at the IIC adapted medical imaging software for use on astronomical data, producing results encapsulated in the first interactive “3D PDF” published in Nature. The speaker will also discuss her continuing collaboration with Microsoft Research on the “WorldWide Telescope” and conclude with thoughts on general principles of data visualization, and how clarification of those principles helps both the public and scientists to learn more from scientific investigations.

Alyssa Goodman was the Founding Director of Harvard's Initiative in Innovative Computing, serving from 2005-8.  She has been Professor of Astronomy at Harvard since 1999 and she is a Research Associate of the Smithsonian Institution. After earning her undergraduate degree in Physics from MIT in 1984 and her Ph.D. in Physics from Harvard in 1989, she held a President’s Fellowship at the University of California at Berkeley, joining Harvard as an Assistant Professor in 1992. Goodman and her research group at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics study the dense gas between the stars, in particular how this interstellar gas arranges itself into new stars. Currently she is principal investigator for The COMPLETE Survey of Star-Forming Regions, which, in 2006, finished mapping out three very large star-forming regions in our Galaxy in their entirety. Her research at the IIC focuses on new ways to visualize and analyze the tremendous data volumes created by surveys like COMPLETE. In 1997, she received the Newton Lacy Pierce Prize from the American Astronomical Society for her work on interstellar. Recently, she served as Chair of the Astronomy Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2008. In 2008-9, Goodman is on sabbatical, working with colleagues from Microsoft Research on the World Wide Telescope Program, and with the staff of WGBH as their Scholar-in-Residence.  At Harvard, Goodman also teaches courses on both astrophysics and the display of data, including one called “The Art of Numbers.”