Transforming a technical space—and its occupants

Once known as the Space Science Center, a building on the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus has been transformed into the place to be for students fascinated by AI, robotics, human-machine relationships—and technologies headed for space. It has also become a learning hub for Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics students.

With its years-long makeover newly completed, Shepherd Laboratories, as it has been known since the 1980s, can boast of an interior to match its sterling pedigree. For example, College of Science and Engineering professors Robert “Bob” Pepin and Rama Murthy studied samples of moon rock collected by Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in 1969. 

“We had a unique facility in Minnesota,” Pepin once said. “We could analyze samples that were smaller than what anybody else in the world could do at that time.”  

And if its walls could talk, Shepherd Labs would also recall the work of pioneering cosmic ray physicists Phyllis St. Cyr Freier and Edward Ney. These faculty members flew numerous high-altitude balloons to reveal the nature of the highly energetic radiation that slams into Earth’s upper atmosphere.

Today, the academic descendants of these legendary scientists study topics undreamed-of in their heyday, such as AI, which is the focus of the GroupLens group. 

The GroupLens group 

Within the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, faculty and students of the GroupLens group use data to fuel real-life applications.

“We like to think of ourselves as people who do real human-computer interaction research on real systems,” says Stevie Chancellor, an assistant professor. “We deploy real things and evaluate how well they do in practice.”

GroupLens projects focus on such areas as making video conferencing more equitable, improving Wikipedia’s accuracy and inclusivity, and restructuring recommendation systems to be “more intuitive, exciting, surprising, and useful for people across the entire web,” Chancellor says. 

In one project, she and her group worked with a data set of more than 26 million Instagram posts “to build an AI system that could predict, up to six months in the future, whether or not somebody’s mental illness might change over time,” she says. 

In the long term, Chancellor and many of her colleagues want to build AI systems that help people become better at tasks humans are already good at—like thinking through complex problems and helping patients understand their conditions. And they are well aware of the potential pitfalls.  

“We need to make sure that AI augments those abilities and doesn’t detract from or replace people in these important settings,” she says. 

Virtual reality, real-world results 

Virtual reality can be fun to experience, but in Shepherd Labs, the technology means business.

“It’s going to create the flagship area for visual computing,” says College of Science and Engineering professor Daniel Keefe. “We solve problems that matter to society—forest fire spread, predicting future climate scenarios.” In his own research, Keefe studies how immersive tools can help doctors identify the best cancer treatment plan. 

Working with data visualization, the researchers are building a space where “people explore and see and really feel more of their data, so they can ask better research questions,” says Sean Dorr, a PhD candidate in computer science and engineering. 

Virtual reality that puts a viewer among trees or by a placid lake could also help indoor-bound people heal.

“Contact with nature can be really restorative,” says College of Science and Engineering professor Victoria Interrante. “What if we could offer that virtually to people who can’t get outside—hospitalized patients, older adults, or people recovering from surgery? Put on a virtual reality headset, and be just someplace better.”

“The way we’re bringing art and computing together to create these visual experiences, this is unique in the world,“ says Keefe.

A space place for students

Students passionate about space now have a state-of-the-art place, not only to study but to build real technologies under the guidance of NASA scientists.  

In one project, the students are designing a satellite to study relatively sudden, violent eruptions on the surface of the sun called solar flares. The students’ design will allow scientists to study the flares by detecting high-energy X-rays from the sun. Flares can disrupt electrical and electronic technologies on Earth, so prediction and early detection of them could reduce the damage. This project is called IMPRESS—the Impulsive Phase Rapid Energetic Solar Spectrometer. 

In a second project, the Experiment for X-ray Navigation, Characterization and Timing (EXACT), the students are building technology to help spacecraft far from Earth orient themselves by comparing X-ray pulses from highly energetic stars called pulsars. The technique is similar to the triangulation method used by Earth-orbiting satellites and cell phones to determine a person’s location.  

Be part of what's next

Learn more about the Shepherd Labs renovation and make a gift to support faculty and student human-centered research.

Read more about student work in Shepherd Labs