H.E. Mrs. Suzanne Mubarak Inaugurates VISTA
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Alexandria —
H.E. Mrs. Suzanne Mubarak, First Lady of Egypt and Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Library of Alexandria and H.E. General Abdel Salam El Mahgoub, Governor of Alexandria, inaugurated the newly installed Virtual Immersive Science and Technology Applications (VISTA) System on 15 February 2006. VISTA is a CAVE (Computer Aided Virtual Environment) – a highly advanced visualization tool – operated by the Library"s International School of Information Science (ISIS).
During the visit, Dr. Ismail Serageldin, Director of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, presented the project with its different uses and applications for researchers. The new visualization system will enable researchers to simulate the behavior of natural or human-engineered systems, instead of merely observing a system or building a physical model of it. This will save time and resources necessary for research and development (R&D) studies required for both scientific and commercial targets.
It was also demonstrated during the visit that the system is ideal in a vast number of applications in fields as diverse as medicine, engineering, architecture, socio-economic analysis, seismic interpretation and well planning, biotechnology research, manufacturing and design, fluid dynamics, and chemistry.
The installation of such a system at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina makes it the first in Africa and the Middle East to provide researchers with such advanced visualization tools. Introducing this technology in the region will provide researchers with the infrastructure they need to cooperate and work closely with researchers from all over the world and will pave the road for further future collaboration. R&D environment will thus be enhanced as the strategic means to securing sustainable development and growth in Egypt and the region.
For more information on VISTA or ISIS, please visit www.bibalex.org/isis.