Paul A. Navrátil - TACC - Texas Advanced Computing Center

Paul A. Navrátil, Ph.D.

Research Associate
Manager, Visualization Software
Texas Advanced Computing Center
University of Texas at Austin

email: (Best way to contact me)

Office: ROC 1.508, (512) 471-6245
The University of Texas at Austin
1 University Station M/S R8700
Austin, TX 78712-0233

[Research] [Publications] [Talks] [CV]

Research

I am a Research Associate and the manager of the Visualization Software group in the Visualization area of the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at the University of Texas at Austin. My research interests include efficient algorithms for large-scale parallel visualization and data analysis (VDA) and innovative design for large-scale VDA systems. My recent work includes algorithms for ultrascale distributed-memory ray tracing, work that enables photo-realistic rendering of the largest datasets produced on supercomputers today, such as cosmologic simulations of the Universe and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations at unprecedented levels of detail. I also help manage TACC's visualization systems, including Longhorn, the world's largest supercomputer dedicated to VDA, and Stallion, the highest-resolution tiled display in the world. I completed my dissertation on memory-efficient, scalable ray tracing in August, 2010, under the supervision of Don Fussell and Calvin Lin.

I am also a member of the Real-Time Graphics and Parallel Systems group in the Department of Computer Science, which is exploring algorithms and architectures for future graphics systems organized around highly parallel, "general-purpose" single-chip parallel-processing hardware.

Recent Publications

Paul A. Navrátil, Donald S. Fussell, Calvin Lin. Increasing Hardware Utilization for Peta-Scale Visualization. Proceedings of the High-End Visualization Workshop. December, 2010.
S. Daruru, S. Dhandapani, G. Gupta, I. Iliev, W. Xu, P. Navrátil, N. Marin, J. Ghosh. Distributed, Scalable Clustering for Detecting Halos in Terascale Astronomy Datasets. Proceedings of KDCloud-10. December, 2010.
Paul A. Navrátil, Jarrett Johnson, Volker Bromm. Life and Death of the First Stars (visualization). Finalist, NSF International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge. November, 2010.
Paul A. Navrátil. Memory-Efficient, Scalable Ray Tracing. Ph.D. dissertation. The University of Texas at Austin, August 2010.
Paul Navrátil, Jarrett Johnson, Volker Bromm. The Bubble Beginning (visualization). Bild der Wissenschaft, August 2010.
Paul A. Navrátil, Brandt Westing, Greg P. Johnson, Ashwini Athyle, Jose Carreno, Freddy Rojas. A Practical Guide to Large-Tiled Displays. Proceedings of the International Symposium on Visual Computing 2009.
Paul A. Navrátil, Maria Esteva. Visualizing Workplace Dynamics from Natural Digital Archives. Texas Advanced Computing Center: TACC TR-08-04, 2008.
Paul A. Navrátil, Jarrett Johnson, Volker Bromm. The Bubble Beginning (visualization). Discover: Presents the Whole Universe special issue. Fall 2008.
Paul A. Navrátil, Jarrett Johnson, Thomas H. Greif, Volker Bromm. The First Stars (visualization). In: Dennis Overbye. "First Stars Were Brutes, but Died Young, Astronomers Say", New York Times, August 1st, 2008.
Paul A. Navrátil, Donald S. Fussell and Calvin Lin. Dynamic Ray Scheduling for Improved System Performance. Proceedings of the IEEE/EG Symposium on Interactive Ray Tracing, 2007.
Paul A. Navrátil, Jarrett L. Johnson and Volker Bromm. Visualization of Cosmological Point-Based Datasets. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (Proceedings of IEEE Visualization 2007), November 2007.
Gregory P. Johnson, Paul A. Navrátil, David Gignac, Karl Schulz, Tommy Minyard. The Colt Visualization Cluster. Texas Advanced Computing Center: TACC TR-07-03, 2007.
Paul A. Navrátil, Jarrett L. Johnson and Volker Bromm. The First Sources of Light (visualization). International Science Grid This Week, February 7th, 2007.
Paul A. Navrátil and William R. Mark. An Analysis of Raytracing Bandwidth Consumption. The University of Texas at Austin, Department of Computer Sciences. Technical Report TR-06-40, 2006.
U.S. Patent 6,782,505: Method and system for generating structured data from semi-structured data sources. Dan Miranker, Lance Obermeyer, Paul Navrátil. issued August 24, 2004.

Classes Taught

Texas A&M GPU Workshop. College Station, Texas. August 10 – 11, 2011.
SSC F375/F395 High-Performance Scientific Computing with GPUs. Division
of Statistics and Scientific Computation, The University of Texas at Austin.
Summer 2011.

Invited Talks

General-Purpose GPU Programming: Hardware Considerations. Guest lecture in Parallel Programming (UT-Austin course CS 380P). Austin, Texas. March 28, 2011.
Large-Scale Isosurfacing on a Distributed GPU Cluster. TACC booth, SC10. New Orleans, Louisiana. November 17, 2010.
Large-Scale Isosurfacing on a Distributed GPU Cluster. NVIDIA booth, SC10. New Orleans, Louisiana. November 16, 2010.
Large-Scale Visualizaiton using a GPU Cluster (co-presentation with Byungil Jeong). NVIDIA GPU Technology Conference. San Jose, California. September 20-23, 2010.
Introduction to Longhorn and GPU-based Computing. Lecture and tutorial, IBERGRID 2010. Universidade de Minho. Braga, Portugal. May 28, 2010.
Large-Scale Visualization at TACC. Dell HPC Webinar. March 30, 2010.
Guest Lecturer for SSC 374E/394E: Visualization and Data Analysis for Scientists and Engineers, Division of Statistics & Scientific Computing, University of Texas at Austin. Fall 2009.
Tutorial on Visualization on Ranger and Spur. TeraGrid 2009. Crystal City, Virginia. June 22-25, 2009.
Tutorial on Advanced Scientific Visualization and Visualization. Universidade do Porto. Porto, Portugal. May 28-29, 2009.
Tutorial on Basic Scientific Visualization and Visualization. Instituto Superior Tecnico, Universidade Tecnica de Lisboa. Lisbon, Portugal. May 25-26, 2009.
Guest Lecturer for SSC 335: Introduction to Scientific/Technical Computing, The University of Texas at Austin. Fall 2008, Spring 2009.
Tutorial on Visualization on Ranger and Spur. TeraGrid 2008. Las Vegas, Nevada. June 9 - 13, 2008.
TA and Guest Lecturer for CS 378: Game Technology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas.

Last updated 23 August 2010.