New ideas and research brought together students, faculty, and staff members for the annual Symposium of University Research and Creative Expression (SOURCE), a daylong event on April 29 at NYIT-Manhattan. Students made presentations to peers and faculty members on a variety of academic topics ranging from phototherapy to advertising trends to using numbers as a literary device.

The keynote presentation, "Left Brain/Right Brain: Round Two, Four Decades of Change in VisualComputing and What Comes Next," was given by Don Greenberg, professor and director of Cornell University's Computer Graphics Program. Greenberg, a self-professed "creative type" who started his career as an architect and shifted into computer programming, recapped the past 40 years of computer graphics and programming history, and offered his take on their future development. 

"I believe the future will be much more [advanced] on the creative side than the technical side," said Greenberg, who described this history as dominated by mathematical, factual "left brainers." 

Though Greenberg predicts a shift from left to right brain dominance in computer programming, he said an interdisciplinary approach is needed in higher education to blend technical and creative thinking. 

"SOURCE is the combination of science, art, and technology," he said. "The future, too, might be in this combination of skills."  

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