From Command Lines to the Arctic

Throughout 30 years of computer graphics, Greg Foss has gone from tweaking knobs on an Evans & Sutherland PS 300 to visualizing the Arctic Ocean. He currently operates in the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) of the University of Texas at Austin, working with machines light years ahead of those he used at Ohio State in the 1980s, but the collaborative process remains relatively similar, nevertheless. After spending many years at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, Foss now operates at the University of Texas at Austin, where TACCputs him in daily contact with scientists that build ultra-complex datasets in need of visualization to make them more accessible for a lay audience. On each project, Foss says he always learns something, even if it is material the scientists already seem to know.