Back from Chicago/IIT

[P3D Dr. George A. Themelis <DrT-3d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Just a brief report from my Chicago visit.  Tuesday noon I left
Cleveland for a 6 hour drive to Chicago (5 1/2 hours driving and
1/2 hours sleeping while driving - thank GOD I am alive!)

Tuesday night after a nice dinner at the Como In restaurant,
courtesy of the ASM International, Chicago Chapter, I gave my 
presentation on "Stereoscopic Imaging in Science and Technology", 
which was well received.

I was surprised and very pleased to see fellow stereo photographer 
and Chicago Stereo club member, George Philosophos (he is Greek too!) 
show up for the talk.   Just he moral support I was looking for.  
He read about my visit in photo-3d (hey, this thing works! :-))  
Thanks George!

My invitation for this visit had come from Professor Robert Foley
of the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT, in the heart of
Chicago).  Tuesday night I stayed with Prof. Foley and on
Wednesday I had a full agenda visiting IIT professors and touring
their labs.  I got a good taste of interesting research, some of
it (especially in the area of fluid dynamics) using stereoscopic 
techniques.

At 3:45 Wednesday afternoon I gave the same presentation to the
Mechanical, Materials and Aerospace Engineering Department.
I was a bit concerned that my presentation was not technical
enough for university level.  I tried to overview the 
fundamental principles and applications of stereoscopic vision
without going into technical details.  I showed classic
examples with no mention of edge-cutting research.  My message 
was that researchers could be making more use of stereoscopic 
imaging for their work.  I believe this point was made clear
through the collection of 100 stereo slides covering areas like
normal stereo for documentation, training, presentation &
marketing, hyperstereo, stereo microscopy, computer modeling,
stereoscopic displays, stereo imaging of displacements, 
mathematical/geometrical models, etc.  I even showed a few just 
plain nice stereo photographs and encouraged people to try it 
with their regular cameras.

The vintage TDC 116 projector worked fine for the occasion.
The 70x70 screen that I carried with me was OK too for the
group size of 30 and 40-50 people.

Overall, a good trip!  I will keep an eye open for other
opportunities for public presentations...

George Themelis


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