DEPARTMENT: In Memoriam

Remembering Georges Grinstein

With great sadness and dear fondness, the

visualization community accepts the loss of one of

our own: Professor Georges Grinstein at the

University of Massachusetts Amherst, a devoted

teacher, recognized researcher, and dear colleague

and mentor, unexpectedly passed away on

Monday, 26 February, 2018.

An emeritus professor of computer science at the Uni-versity of Massachusetts Lowell, Georges Grinstein was a fixture in the visualization community. He cofounded the IEEE Visualization conference and had held varying leadership positions at since 1990, was instrumental in the establishment of the VAST (Visual Analytics Sci-ence and Technology) Challenge and had been its co-chair since 2006, and had been the cochair of the International Conference on Information Visualization since 2007. In addition, he was active in teaching as well as conducting and publishing visualization and visual-analytics research to the very end. Below, various mem-bers of the visualization community pay tribute to Georges. We hope you enjoy sharing these respectful and beloved memories.

Haim Levkowitz University of Massachusetts Lowell

John T. Fallon University of Massachusetts Amherst

José L. Encarnação Technische Universität Darmstadt

Catherine Plaisant University of Maryland

Jean Scholtz Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Mark Whiting Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Kris Cook Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Daniel Keim University of Konstanz

Editor: Theresa-Marie Rhyne theresamarierhyne@gmail.com

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A DEVOTED PROFESSOR, BY HAIM LEVKOWITZ

A sketch of Georges Grinstein created by Haim Levkowitz in 2012.

I am confident that Georges’s academic and professional brilliance, his vision, and his creativity will all be told by other people. Here, I want to shine a light on another side of him: his total commitment and loyalty to his students.

I was brought to UMass Lowell by Georges (and the late Ron Pickett) and worked with him, in one way or another, for about 25 years, until he retired in 2014.

A year or so before I joined UMass Lowell, Georges traveled to China. One result of that trip was the start of a flow of Chinese students to get a PhD at Lowell, under Georges. Over time he attracted students from various foreign countries. The Grinstein family became their family away from home. In particular, the Grinstein home was where these students got to experience the uniquely American holiday of Thanksgiving. It didn’t matter how many foreign students Georges had at any given moment; they were all invited for Thanksgiving.

Over the years Georges was a leading force for starting several companies (including AnVil, of which I was a cofounder). It was always about the students and their work. (AnVil was the direct outcome of the PhD dissertations of Patrick Hoffman and David Pinkney.) And when the going got rough (as often happens with start-ups), Georges—sometimes to the dissatisfaction of co-founders and investors—put the future well-being of student-employees above that of the com-pany!

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IN MEMORIAM

A MENTOR TO STUDENTS, BY JOHN T. FALLON

Georges Grinstein (the first person in row 3) with his most recent students.

I’ve been a student of Georges Grinstein for the past eight years. In that time span, I’ve seen him in many environments, including the classroom, our research lab, conferences, and outside the academic setting. In every setting he showcased the traits that all of his peers, students, and friends have revered so much. I’ve witnessed him approach every situation with an exceedingly positive and calming attitude that always managed to influence those around him in the best way possible. As a testament, I’ve seen numerous students walk into Georges’ office stressed out and disheartened and, just like clockwork, they would resurface with a renewed vigor for their re-search and studies and lacking the stressful visage that they entered with. He served as a source of support and inspiration for many.

I’ve seen Georges’ kindness and compassion extended to many people from different walks of life. In academia there are a wide range of backgrounds and skill levels represented. I recall that my interview to become a research assistant under his guidance involved only a few questions and was over within five minutes. He asked if I was a quick learner and was willing to put in hard work, and if I was interested in the opportunity he was offering. After consulting with a number of my peers, I found that that this interview process was replicated with others. He didn’t judge or put much thought into your background; he put an emphasis on a solid work ethic and a passion to succeed and learn. I believe that a large part of Georges’ life and contributions were a perfect exemplification of those latter points. I will always be grateful for the opportunities he provided me. Georges will be missed by many, but his spirit, jubilation, work ethic, and passion will be carried on by all of those whom he touched.

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A BELOVED COLLEAGUE, BY JOSÉ L. ENCARNAÇÃO When Georges Grinstein passed away on 26 February 2018, we lost a good friend and very competent and successful colleague, a well-recognized peer worldwide in computer graphics and scientific visualization, and a very kind personality. Our thoughts and most sincere condolences are with his close friends, with his former university faculty colleagues, with his former students, and especially with his family. They all have to cope now with the pain and sadness caused by Georges’ passing away. It was a big loss.

I first met Georges during the time we were all working in graphics standards; it must have been sometime between 1975 and 1980. We were touring the world, going from meeting to meeting, always in different locations, so that it is hard to remember exactly where I met him first. It was the time of Siggraph CORE, GKS, PHIGS, CGM, CGI, etc. He was a US participant, and I was participating from the German side in those at-the-time very prominent international standardiza-tion activities. It was a very intensive type of work, but I got to know Georges as a very compe-tent and fair partner.

After this phase in our lives, we continued a very good personal and professional relationship. I visited him a couple times at Lowell, and he visited me several times at Technische Universität Darmstadt and the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics. I always appreciated very much the discussions I had with Georges; they were stimulating and for me always very rewarding.

The last contact I had with him was in early October of 2017. Among other things, he reported by email to me about some heart issues he was experiencing and wrote, “Basically, somebody pointed out to me some new research on reversal of heart blockages through diet. I visited the Cleveland Clinic and started it! I have 4 children and grandchildren and wanted to live to see the young ones grow (and finish educating the older ones). It’s worked—I lost 70 lbs. and am in much better health.”

I was therefore terribly surprised and deeply saddened when I heard that Georges had suddenly passed away in February of 2018—only four months later!

All of us who knew Georges have lost not only a well-known peer in computer graphics and scientific visualization but also a successful academic teacher, a very motivating and engaged colleague, and an outstanding scientist. He was a great professional companion for many of us for many, many years and an extremely precious, good friend. We all will miss him very much. But we will not only miss the colleague and the expert—we will miss even more the friend and the personality he was. We will never forget him and will forever honor his memory!

Our sincere sympathy and condolences go to all his family.

May he rest in peace!

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IN MEMORIAM

A CHAMPION OF THE VAST CHALLENGE, BY CATHERINE PLAISANT, JEAN SCHOLTZ, MARK WHITING, AND KRIS COOK

Georges Grinstein (third from the left) as a member of the VAST (Visual Analytics Science and Technology) Challenge Team. (Source: the VAST Challenge Team; used with permission).

Georges was a tireless champion of information visualization and visual analytics, with exten-sive contributions to the field and 29 years of publications. Georges’ passion for the field was particularly evident in his commitment to the VAST Challenge. After running the 2005 InfoVis Contest, and with the encouragement and support of Jim Thomas, Georges worked with an ex-pert team to launch the VAST Challenge in 2006. Georges cochaired the Challenge from its inception until his death. Georges also collaborated with two other VAST Challenge Committee members to secure a US National Science Foundation grant, which to this day allows researchers to access the results from all the VAST Challenges with the Visual Analytics Benchmark Repos-itory (https://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/varepository). Georges also used his role in the VAST Chal-lenge to help advance new approaches for evaluation of visual analytics, focusing particularly on automated methods for providing developer feedback.

Georges was an enthusiastic supporter of students and early-career researchers. Not only did he encourage student participation in the VAST Challenge, he also gave his own students growth opportunities through participating in dataset creation, VAST Challenge management, and judg-ing. Georges saw the best in every VAST Challenge submission and encouraged the committee to award creativity, not just correctness. He advocated for providing encouraging feedback, and he demonstrated his positive approach in his interactions with his fellow committee members. No matter how many hours were needed to review the Challenge entries, Georges was always cheerful and upbeat about the number and quality of the submissions. We all appreciate the op-portunity to have been his collaborators and friends for so many years.

Note: The initial VAST Challenge Committee included Jean Scholtz, Theresa, O’Connell, and Sharon Laskowski (NIST); Georges Grinstein (University of Massachusetts Lowell); Catherine Plaisant (University of Maryland); and Mark Whiting (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory).

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A PASSIONATE MENTOR AND COLLEAGUE, BY DANIEL KEIM I first met Georges at one of his early tutorials on multidimensional visualization at the IEEE Visualization conference, at a time when I had just started as a PhD student. His tutorial inspired me to change my research topic and work in the visualization area. Georges was always full of ideas, producing innovative results him-self but also shaping new research areas. His main goal, however, was to inspire his PhD students and collab-orators and help them excel.

Georges, Matthew Ward (who passed away on 13 Oct. 2014), and I spent a significant amount of time to-gether writing our book Interactive Data Visualization: Foundations, Techniques, and Applications. During this process, it became clear that Georges was not only a great researcher but also a great leader. Whenever we met, his ideas were stimulating and thought-provoking, his attitude was encouraging and motivating, and his personality was enthusiastic and energizing. His goal was to make this world a better place, and he want-ed to contribute to this end by educating and inspiring his students, colleagues, and friends. In this spirit he continued to the very end. Even on the last day of his life, he was working on several paper projects for VIS 2018 with some of my PhD students, projects that will continue in the spirit and in memoriam of Georges.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS Haim Levkowitz is the chair of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. He was recruited to Lowell by Georges Grinstein and the late Ron Pickett in 1989. He and Georges worked together from 1989 to 2014. During that period, they cofounded the Institute for Visualization and Perception Research (IVPR) and AnVil Inc., and were among the pioneer contributors to the IEEE Visualization conference. Con-tact him at haim@cs.uml.edu.

John T. Fallon is a PhD student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He was a member of Georges’ IVPR lab and his most recent lab, VAIL. He had studied under Georges Grinstein for the past eight years, receiving his bachelor and master’s degrees, and was working on his PhD under Georges’ guidance. Contact him at jtfallon@umass.edu.

José L. Encarnação is a professor emeritus of Technische Universität Darmstadt and the retired founding director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics. Around 1975, he began working with Georges on graphics standards development. Contact him at JL_Encarnacao@t-online.de.

Catherine Plaisant is a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland’s Human–Computer Interaction Laboratory. She worked with Georges on many IEEE VAST Chal-lenge Competitions and a few projects. She loved to speak French with him. Contact her at plaisant@cs.umd.edu.

Jean Scholtz is a scientist at the the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). She had the honor of working with Georges and a number of his graduate students when she was at NIST and PNNL. Contact her at Jean.Scholtz@pnnl.gov.

Mark Whiting is a senior data scientist and visual-analytics researcher at PNNL. He worked with Georges to create the first IEEE VAST Challenge in 2006 and each VAST Contest or Challenge every year since then. Contact him at mark.a.whiting@pnnl.gov.

Kris Cook is a technical advisor in visual analytics at PNNL. She had the pleasure of work-ing with Georges for several years as part of the VAST Challenge Committee. Contact her at Kris.Cook@pnnl.gov.

Daniel Keim is the head of the University of Konstanz’s Data Analysis and Visualization Group. He has known and worked with George for all of his academic career. Together with Georges and Matthew Ward, he coauthored Interactive Data Visualization: Foundations, Techniques, and Applications. Contact him at keim@uni-konstanz.de.

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IN MEMORIAM

Theresa-Marie Rhyne edits IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications’ Visualization Viewpoints department. She was a long-time visualization colleague of Georges and was the coordinator and editor of this article. Contact her at theresamarierhyne@gmail.com.

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