Kitware News
Kitware Grand Opening
Kitware was proud to host the grand opening of its new headquarters in Clifton Park, New York on March 5, 2019. CEO Lisa Avila and CTO Bill Hoffman led the event with opening remarks, followed by a ribbon cutting ceremony featuring Lieutenant Governor Kathy Hochul. Refreshments rounded out the festivities along with plenty of photo ops. Many thanks again to Abele Builders, the Town of Clifton Park Industrial Development Agency, Empire State Development, Spatial Solutions, Bast Hatfield, Keystone Architectural Services, Central New York Electrical Contractors, Merkel Donohue, and FASTSIGNS.
Our New Headquarters Features
- over 40,000 square feet with space to hire
- meeting rooms with geographical themes such as the Adirondacks and Antarctica
- a rooftop patio with over 2,000 square feet
- lots of natural light
- a variety of office configurations to suit the needs of our teams, including open work spaces and casual seating
- a break room/auditorium with more than 2,500 square feet for hackathons, tech lunches, training course, and company celebrations
- treadmill offices for employees wanting some exercise while they work
Grand Opening Demo
As part of the grand opening, guests were led throughout the building on an interactive tour featuring demos by the technical teams on a variety of topics, such as detecting fake videos, learning how to spot fake images, how CMake is integral to the development of many software applications, visualizing scientific simulations on mobile devices, and virtual training for laparoscopic surgeons. See https://www.kitware.com/demos/ for details on each demo.
Detecting Threats
Using a collection of cameras and sensors combined with deep learning, Kitware’s THREAT X is a software system designed to be deployed on field conditions to provide squad commanders an up-to-date picture current threat conditions.
Our tour demo featured the unblinking and untiring THREAT X, which deploys a collection of cameras and uses the latest deep learning techniques to identify scene elements (such as windows and doors), track motion, identify elements that look like people, and identify weapons out to distances as great as one kilometer.
Spotting Fake Images and Videos
Modified and fake images and videos have become a serious challenge for validating and authenticating visual media content in news stories, social media, and other sources. Kitware is developing media forensics techniques to detect fake or edited images and videos obtained from cell phones, surveillance cameras, satellites, and other sources.
Demo attendees had the opportunity to look over a variety of images and videos and guess which was real and which was fake.
Demonstrating CMake
Millions of copies of Kitware’s CMake are downloaded each year by software developers who use the tool to manage the building and testing of their software across multiple platforms. Kitware builds and maintains a suite of open source solutions for use in the software development process that facilitate high-quality software development.
During this demo, our visitors were shown some familiar and notable applications that use CMake, as well as a visual display of its impressive download statist
Visualizing Science on Cell Phones
Numerical simulations have a large impact on our lives though many of us don’t realize their importance. They are used to create new pharmaceuticals to combat disease; investigate new surgical procedures; design new fuel-efficient cars; track and predict changes in our climate and biosphere; develop lighter, stronger materials; and explore new ways of generating energy.
Visitors got a taste of what our technology can do by running simulation demos on their mobile devices using VTK.js and ParaView Glance. Check out https://www.kitware.com/demos/#scientific for the QR codes for these simulations.
Performing Virtual Laparoscopic Surgery
Laparoscopic surgery is a minimally invasive procedure where the surgeon must guide the tools based on the camera feed displayed on a video monitor.
However, this procedure requires significant training in the skills required to use the tools. Our virtual task trainer for fundamental laparoscopy training, designed and tested in collaboration with RPI, Buffalo, and UCA, implements core training tasks including suturing, pattern cutting, and camera navigation. Demo attendees were able to see the haptic devices in action and even try out some pattern cutting.
North Carolina Office Delivers Free Courses
Our Carrboro, North Carolina office hosted its second Biomedical Image Analysis and Visualization Course on March 12-14. Members of our Medical Computing and High-Performance Computing and Visualization teams taught clinical researchers and technologists how to use the open source tools VTK, ParaView, ITK, and 3D Slicer, which are widely used in the medical imaging research community. We had close to 30 participants ranging from nearby University of North Carolina to as far away as Seattle Children’s Hospital.
Check out https://blog.kitware.com/events/ for future course offerings and other events.
Kitware Welcomes New Team Members
We’re pleased to welcome the newest Kitware employees at their respective locations!
In Clifton Park, NY:
- Anthony Barricelli, R&D Intern
- Izabella Colon, Annotation Specialist
- Mary Elise Dedicke, Technical Proposal Writer
- Hannah DeFazio, R&D Intern
- Jae Fish, Annotation Intern
- Todd Friedman, Compliance Associate
- Matthias Kirchner, Staff R&D Engineer
- Andrew Matrai, R&D Engineer
- Michael McDermott, R&D Engineer
- Aimee Messier, Accounting Associate
- Najam Syed, R&D Engineer
- Bhavan Vasu, R&D Engineer (former intern)
- Branden Wagner, IT Security Manager
In Arlington, VA:
- Brandon Davis, R&D Engineer
- Christopher Funk, R&D Engineer
In Carrboro, NC:
- Patrick Avery, R&D Engineer (former intern)
- Ramraj Chandradevan, R&D Intern
- Suraj Maniyar, R&D Intern
In Lyon, France:
- Gabriel Devillers, R&D Engineer (former intern)
- Edern Haumont, R&D Engineer (former intern)
- Mhamed Lmarbouh, R&D Intern
- Marie Pujol, Admin & Accountancy Assistant
- Antoine Robert, R&D Engineer
- Jan-Michael Rye, R&D Engineer
- Max Zeyen, R&D Engineer