Research Institute of Visual Computing (RIVIC)

Impact: Economic, Technological, Environmental, Societal

Description of impact

The Research Institute of Visual Computing, RIVIC, is the collaborative amalgamation of research programmes between the computer science departments in Aberystwyth, Bangor, Cardiff and Swansea Universities. It was funded for five years starting in 2009. Researchers continued to collaborate in these areas across Wales thereafter.

Visual Computing represents one of the most challenging and inspiring arenas in computer science. Today, fifty percent of content on the internet is in the form of visual data and information, and more than fifty percent of the neurons in the human brain are used in visual perception and reasoning.

The pan-Wales institute produced research excellence, by delivering over 416 publications (at least 211 were in leading journals and 36 were joint publications with authors from multiple institutions across Wales) during the project, captured an additional £9.43 million in research income. Increased research capacity across Wales, with 28 core RIVIC scientists employed, 28 research officers and 36 research students. It ran a graduate school, and brought many international distinguished scientists (as visiting Fellows) to Wales (including Professor Nelson Max, Prof Shi-Min Hu, Prof Hanan Same, Prof Leila De Floriani, Prof David Ebert, Prof Chuck Hansen, and Prof Edmond Jonckheere).

Impact Summary for the General Public

Developed and expanded research in Wales in three areas: (1) Increased research to make Wales an international leading country in visualisation. (2) Raised the research profile in computer vision and image/video processing to be internationally leading. (3) Raised the capability of computer graphics and virtual environment research to an international visible level.

Description of the underpinning research

The collaboration focused around 7 cross-cutting themes.
Volume Graphics and Visualization
• Video Processing and Video Visualization
• Vision-based Geometric Modelling
• Virtual Human Modelling and Augmented Reality
• Scientific Foundation of Visual Computing Interfaces
• Medical Image Processing and Analysis
• Scientific Visualization and Information Visualization

Beneficiaries and reach of impact

Beneficiaries across Wales, Nationally in the UK and internationally, including:

• Researchers: First class researchers attracted to Wales and take up permanent positions. Research employment across Wales in the scientific and information visualisation areas

• Academics. New and existing academics have used RIVIC to leverage further grant funding

• Students. Trained students and graduates in the graduate School, go onto research positions in UK and internationally.

• Industry. Post-Doctoral researchers moved to industry (including Disney, Google, BBC research);

• The University benefited from research collaborations with industry, such as working with Adobe, NHS, GeoShow, Data Exchange, NHS, EADS.

• The University benefited from the research and RIVIC enabled three visual computing research themes to be developed at Bangor to international status: (i) Medical graphics. The Bangor team are at the forefront of research developments in the use of virtual environments for medical procedures training and skills acquisition. (ii) Visual Analytics is analytical reasoning facilitated by interactive visual interfaces. (iii) Visual Perception. We have established research into applied visual perception, especially in the context of new display technologies and high dynamic range (HDR) imaging.
• RIVIC featured in Bangor's Environment REF5 template REF2014; and papers developed by collaborations in RIVIC featured in Bangor's REF2014 submission
Impact statusClosed
Impact date2009 → 2015
Category of impactEconomic, Technological, Environmental, Societal
Impact levelBenefit

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