A faculty committee recommended that Purdue University should create a visualization facility to support the discovery, learning, and engagement missions. That recommendation was soon followed by a proposal written to the NSF MRI program to fund the creation of a visualization facility. That proposal was approved by NSF and supplemented by hardware donations from Intel and IBM. In addition, the University contributed funds to remodel an old billiard room in the Memorial Union building. Approximately 5500 square feet of space was remodeled and hardware was installed that included a large tiled display, a Fakespace flex (Cave – like device), haptic devices, motion capture, and computation and storage equipment. The Envision Center for Data Perceptualization opened on April 12, 2004 and is administered by the central IT organization at Purdue(ITaP ). The facility has a full-time technical staff that works with faculty from many disciplines on projects related to scientific visualization, information visualization, and entertainment graphics.