<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:verdana,sans-serif">

<b style="" id="gmail-docs-internal-guid-d553a2eb-dfe0-2d8b-c366-4e7b09607b02"><p dir="ltr" style="font-weight:normal;line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Dear VTK Community-</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="font-weight:normal;line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Kitware is submitting a VTK development grant proposal to the NIH in early July, and we’d like you to send us a letter of support for that proposal. This four year proposal aims to make significant improvements to VTK including rendering enhancements (VR and AR), better support for the web (such as VTK.js), improved data integration (supporting deep learning systems and federated, distributed databases, for example), and updated mechanisms for community support (improving the software and contribution process, documentation).</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="font-weight:normal;line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">We are very excited about the proposal since it will make a very positive impact on VTK, its community, and the many applications that use VTK. Several years ago we received a similar award and were able to revamp our rendering support (OpenGL), improve our software processes, and lay the foundation for VTK.js (among other achievements). Now, we can really use your help with our follow-on proposal. Part of the strategy of our proposal is to demonstrate to the reviewers that VTK plays a critical part in medical innovation. Along this line,</span><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:700;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"> we want to hear from the developers and users of VTK, so that they can indicate their support for VTK and our proposal.</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="font-weight:normal;line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">If you’d like to help, we have included three example letters.  Please modify one of them to fit your circumstances, copy it to your letterhead, sign it, and then send it (a scanned pdf is fine) directly to me by June 30. These letters in no way obligate you or your employer, they simply state “VTK is great and important to my work.” Also, don’t worry if you are not doing biomedical research, we want to hear from everybody. Note that this information (i.e., the names of endorsers) is considered private, only the writers of the VTK proposal and the NIH review team will see this information.</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="font-weight:normal;line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me directly. Thanks and we hope to hear from you (by June 30). Feel free to forward this to friends and family.</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="font-weight:normal;line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Sincerely,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="font-weight:normal;line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Will Schroeder</span></p><p style="font-weight:normal;line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Stephen Aylward</span></p><p style="font-weight:normal;line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Ken Martin</span></p><p style="font-weight:normal;line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"><br></span></p><p style="font-weight:normal;line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"><br></span></p><p style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"><u>Example support letters follow:</u></span></p><p style="font-weight:normal;line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"><br></span></p><p style="font-weight:normal;line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap"><b style="font-weight:normal" id="gmail-docs-internal-guid-751c7172-dfe1-113f-b287-ddf58ebb184f"></b></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><b style="font-weight:normal" id="gmail-docs-internal-guid-751c7172-dfe1-113f-b287-ddf58ebb184f"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Example 1</span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><b style="font-weight:normal" id="gmail-docs-internal-guid-751c7172-dfe1-113f-b287-ddf58ebb184f"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">=========</span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><b style="font-weight:normal" id="gmail-docs-internal-guid-751c7172-dfe1-113f-b287-ddf58ebb184f"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Dr. Ken Martin</span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><b style="font-weight:normal" id="gmail-docs-internal-guid-751c7172-dfe1-113f-b287-ddf58ebb184f"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Kitware, Inc.</span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><b style="font-weight:normal" id="gmail-docs-internal-guid-751c7172-dfe1-113f-b287-ddf58ebb184f"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">28 Corporate Drive</span></b></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><b style="font-weight:normal" id="gmail-docs-internal-guid-751c7172-dfe1-113f-b287-ddf58ebb184f"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Clifton Park, NY 12065, USA</span></b></p><b style="font-weight:normal" id="gmail-docs-internal-guid-751c7172-dfe1-113f-b287-ddf58ebb184f"><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Dear Dr. Martin,</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">I am writing to indicate my support for your NIH proposal for the continued development of VTK. The VTK standards and software are absolutely critical to my lab, the ___ Lab at ___ University, and to my collaborators around the world. Even as we speak, I am working on a project involving complex visualizations using 3D Slicer, Osirix, ParaView, and ITKSnap (which are largely built on VTK). Several of my students also use VTK software libraries to write customized user interfaces and visualizations for my scientific and clinical collaborators. Our most recent application was for a physiologist who wanted to explore very specialized data related to the movement of the tongue in speech after glossectomy surgery.</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">There are many worthy software projects under development around the world, but very few who can claim to be foundational. VTK can claim this, and I'm certain it can claim to be at the core of hundreds of software products that will be used by many biomedical researchers and thousands more that will be developed and used in-house. The complexity of visualization tasks has continued to grow with the volume of data and its connections across scales and from anatomy to function and from individuals to populations. VTK is keeping up with the demand—leading the rest, in fact—and should be a high priority for continued funding.</span></p><br><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Example 2</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">=========</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Dr. William J. Schroeder</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Kitware, Inc.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">28 Corporate Drive</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Clifton Park, NY 12065, USA</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Dear Dr. Schroeder,</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">I enthusiastically endorse your proposed effort to support and improve VTK. We use this open source software in our work and have found it extremely helpful as we create new technological solutions. We have developed a software application that is currently being used by around the world for scientific data visualization to gain new insights. Your Visualization Toolkit has provided the software tools needed to develop that application that has satisfied the needs of a very diverse customer base. We definitely would be interested in your proposed VR/AR enhancements and improved integration with web services. VTK fills a vital role in the international community’s scientific computing infrastructure; additional developments along the lines that you propose will certainly accelerate innovation.</span></p><br><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Example 3</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">=========</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Dr. Stephen R. Aylward</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Kitware, Inc.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">101 East Weaver St, Ste G4</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Carrboro, NC  27510, USA</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">Dear Dr. Aylward,</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);background-color:transparent;font-weight:400;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;text-decoration:none;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap">I am writing in ardent support of your NIH proposal to continue the development, enhancement, and dissemination of the Visualization Toolkit (VTK). Not only do I use it in several projects myself, but I have found that it fosters the dissemination and extension of research by allowing the community to efficiently reproduce research, to easily combine contributions in unexpected ways, and to transfer research into production. Developing and maintaining a project as large and complex as VTK while fostering such an active community is a breathtaking achievement, and I hope Kitware obtains the funding it needs to keep this work up.</span></p></b><br class="gmail-Apple-interchange-newline">

<br><p></p></b><br class="gmail-Apple-interchange-newline">

<br clear="all"></div><div><br></div>-- <br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div>William J. Schroeder, PhD<br>Kitware, Inc. - Building the World's Technical Computing Software<br>28 Corporate Drive<br>Clifton Park, NY 12065<br><a href="mailto:will.schroeder@kitware.com" target="_blank">will.schroeder@kitware.com</a><br><a href="http://www.kitware.com" target="_blank">http://www.kitware.com</a><br>(518) 881-4902</div></div></div></div>