from ACM technews
Virtual Reality Solves Real Life Problems
Golden Gate X Press (San Francisco State University) (12/13/07) Tabatabai,
Ali
At San Francisco State University's Center for Computing in Life Sciences
(CCLS), students and professors work on solving some of California's most
troubling problems, including health and the environment. "We're dealing
with things like California health care, ecology, economy, and using a lot
of collaborative science to deal with what's happening around us," says
CCLS staff researcher Michael Wong. CCLS is an offshoot of the school's
computer science department, but it brings together biologists, chemists,
and other scholars from the College of Science and Engineering to perform
research and find practical solutions. "It's a great launching point for
students," Wong says. "They further their plans and really make a
contribution to science and society in California." Wong is using is
background in game theory to create a computer game to help train future
nurses and reduce the state's nursing shortage. The lab developed a
multiplayer role-playing game that puts student nurses in a virtual
hospital with virtual patients. The game was made with the help of actors
from the drama department who portrayed ailments and emergencies, while
Wong and his team wrote the code and made the game competitive. Another
research project developed software so the biology department could track a
species of invasive ants that threatened California's ecosystem. The
researchers captured the ants on video, allowing biologists and software
engineers to trace patterns in their behavior and discover how certain
movements were related to the ants' genetic makeup. A high-powered,
gene-tracking computer cluster was used to help the biologists analyze the
ants' behavior.
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