Welcome to the fourth Symposium on Large-Scale Data Analysis and Visualization, held this year in Paris, France.

In many areas of science, simulations and experiments begin to generate many petabytes of data, with some sciences facing exabytes of data in the near term. Similarly, the collection of information about the Internet applications and users for a variety of purposes is generating only more data. Our ability to manage, mine, analyze, and visualize the data is fundamental to the knowledge discovery process. That is, the value of data at extreme scale can be fully realized only if we have an end-to-end solution, which demands a collective, inter-disciplinary effort to develop.

The Large-Scale Data Analysis and Visualization (LDAV) symposium, to be held in conjunction with IEEE VIS 2014, aims at bringing together domain scientists, data analytics and visualization researchers, and users, and fostering the needed exchange to develop the next-generation data-intensive analysis and visualization technology. Attendees will be introduced to the latest and greatest research innovations in large data management, analysis, and visualization, learn how these innovations impact data intensive computing and knowledge discovery, and also learn about the critical issues in creating a complete end-to-end solution. It is our hope to foster a community of research, innovation and solutions specifically targeting the problems of large-scale data.

After the submission deadline in late May 2014, we received 53 abstracts, 43 final manuscripts (81% completion rate) that were reviewed and resulted in 12 accepted (28%) papers. These numbers represent our most ever abstracts (numbering 44 in 2013, 45 in 2012, and 37 in 2011), our most ever final manuscripts (35 in 2013, 34 in 2012, and 37 in 2011), and our lowest acceptance rate (37% in 2013, 53% in 2012, and 56% in 2011). At least three members of the International Program Committee (IPC) reviewed each paper. The review process was single-blind: the members of the IPC and the chairs knew the identity of the authors, but not the other way around. A great effort was made to identify and prevent conflicts of interest at all levels, and all reviewers were asked to read and agree to the IEEE Visualization and Graphics Technical Committee (VGTC) ethics guidelines. After all the reviews were completed, the primary reviewer led an online discussion among all reviewers and was responsible for writing a summary review and recommendation. Based on the reviewers’ recommendations, the individual reviews, the online discussions, and after a thorough deliberation by the Program Chairs, we made final acceptance decisions. Further, to highlight ongoing work and late breaking topics, the Poster Chairs selected 10 posters and included their abstracts in the proceedings.

We are thrilled to have Dr. Anders Ynnerman, Professor in Scientific Visualization at the University of Linköping, as our keynote speaker. Dr. Ynnerman’s research areas include large scale visualization facilities, medical imaging, scientific visualization, and computer graphics.

Putting LDAV together was a huge team effort, and we would like to thank the LDAV steering committee, Jim Ahrens, Chris Johnson, Michael Papka, and Kwan-Liu Ma, the Symposium Chairs, Chuck Hansen and Thierry Carrard, the Posters Chairs, Chaoli Wang and Julien Tierny, and the members of the International Program Committee. Finally, we would like to thank the authors of the submitted papers and posters. Without their innovative, exciting work, there would be no LDAV.

Watch the Video Preview for LDAV 2014.

Hank Childs, University of Oregon / Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Renato Pajarola, University of Zurich
Venkatram Vishwanath, Argonne National Laboratory
LDAV Program Chairs