Scientific visualization has become an active area of research. Most researchers and students in the field of visualization, however, do not have access to data sets generated by the state-of-the-art simulations. In the case they have access to some of these data sets, they often do not get to directly interact with the scientists who generated the data sets. This interaction is crucial for obtaining the understanding of what scientists really need to get out of their data sets and what visualization functionalities are missing in existing visualization software tools.

"Meet the Scientists", a panel held at the Visualization 2007 Conference providing such interaction, is made possible through the DOE SciDAC Institute for Ultrascale Visualization (Ultravis Institute). Scientists in four representative areas are invited to attend the Visualization Conference and participate in the panel. Each scientist describes his/her application, data sets, and the corresponding visualization and data analysis needs and challenges, and then answer questions. By making their data sets openly available through the Ultravis Institute after the Conference, more visualization researchers will be given the chance to work on the problems truly faced by the scientists. This web site records the valuable information provided by the scientists and visualization researchers who have worked on their data sets. It thus provides novices the correct understanding of the problems, and subsequently help accelerate the development of the field of scientific visualization. We invite other scientists to contribute to this site. We also welcome contributions of good visaulizations and findings using these applications and data sets.