Access 3D Lab

​Office of Research and Scholarship, College of Arts and Sciences
​University of South Florida

​Access 3D lab is the leading destination for research and training in advanced digital technologies.
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The lab leverages cutting-edge 3D scanners and drones for advanced research and social good. This means preserving at-risk cultural heritage sites with lidar, revitalizing urban districts with augmented reality, transforming early childhood education with 3D printing and virtual reality, and pioneering geospatial workflows for smart cities.

3D Lab Tour

News

USF and Phoenix Lidar: Building the Future of LiDAR Education and Smart City Planning
​In this interview with industry publication Lidar News, Dr. Harrison discusses how Access 3D Lab's investments in mobile and aerial lidar mean that the lab can now digitize anything from the size of a pea through an entire landscape, coastline, or urban district. This capability is integrated into exciting new hands-on courses in USF's Smart City Certificate, such as Mobile Lidar Field Methods, where students conduct field surveys of architectural heritage around Tampa Bay. 

Dr. Harrison to present at European Association of Archaeologists conference in Rome
The article, entitled  "Digital Heritage at the Disappearing Island: A Holistic Approach to Endangered Coastal Heritage " the process behind creating high-resolution simulations of the projected impacts of rising sea levels on coastal heritage, with a novel combination of terrestrial lidar, aerial lidar, and GIS. These analyses help advance communication between academic researchers and local land managers, who must decide if, when, and how to address the problem of beach erosion and historic preservation, despite limited resources.

Dr. Harrison publishes article in Social Studies for the Young Learner
The article, entitled "Do You Know What an Archaeologist Does? Exploring Cultural Heritage in Real-World and Digital Contexts" discusses a heritage project that brought preschool children into Access 3D Lab to learn about archaeology, technology, and 3D printing. The article highlights the value of engaging with high-level concepts of digital heritage from an early age. 

Access 3D Lab presents at Green Destinations Conference in Estonia
Lab Director Dr. Laura Harrison will discuss a case study from coastal Florida, showcasing high-resolution simulations using terrestrial and aerial lidar, and GIS to address the impacts of rising sea levels on vulnerable heritage sites. This research aims to promote sustainable tourism and protect natural and cultural heritage in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

​ARTours Clearwater Brings Augmented Reality Murals to Downtown Clearwater
ARTours Clearwater is a new mural experience that uses augmented reality to make four murals along a 0.7-mile route through downtown Clearwater burst to life with interactive animations. The project brings together USF's technical expertise in 3D scanning and video game design with Clearwater's vision of creating vibrant urban streetscapes that weave together art and technology. Download the ARTours Clearwater App on iOS and Google Play now.

Instrumentation

Software

Faculty

Dr. Laura K. Harrison is the Director of Access 3D Lab, where she oversees instrumentation and workflows, spearheads outreach with faculty and researchers, and carries out collaborative digital science and digital humanities research. Dr. Harrison is an advocate of open access and interdisciplinary approaches in the sciences and humanities. She has over ten years of experience as PI and co-PI of research projects in archaeology and museum studies. Her experience with 3D virtualization includes digitally reconstructing an endangered archaeological site in Turkey, documenting historic architecture in Europe with terrestrial laser scanning, and creating a virtual museum for a collection of global archaeological and ethnographic objects, among others. As Director of USF’s Access 3D Lab, Dr. Harrison looks forward to mobilizing the facility’s resources to support and advance student and faculty research at USF and beyond. 

Staff

Alex Fawbush is a Research Support Specialist for the Access 3D Lab and the Institute for Digital Exploration (IDEx). His duties include the operation of advanced 3D instruments, processing captured data, training/consulting with lab users, assisting with public outreach, social media management, and the creation of technical reports, workflows, and metadata. Alex also served in the U.S. Navy for eight years where he was an electronic warfare technician, deploying to the Persian Gulf and the Caribbean Sea. He is also an MA candidate in the Applied Anthropology program at USF, focusing on archaeology and cultural resource management with Dr. Thomas Pluckhahn.

2023-2024 Interns

Hannah Thieryung is an MA student in the History Department at USF Tampa focusing on Irish History and Public History. Her Irish studies research is primarily done with Dr. Matt Knight and looks at Irish cultural nationalism through the eyes of theater and literature. Her public history research, done with Dr. Jennifer Knight, has mainly been done working as an intern with the May Stringer House in Brooksville, Florida. Her goal with Access 3D is to create an accessible virtual tour of the upper floors of the May Stringer House for museum guests with mobility issues to enjoy. ​

Kathryn Bell is a 3rd year undergraduate student at the Judy Genshaft Honors College double majoring in History and Criminology with a minor in Environmental Science & Policy. As a recipient of the CAS-VVS Fellowship, she is working on the Transylvania Bones Scanning Project to 3D scan and archive archaeological human remains from Medieval Romania. Kathryn aims to further expand her interdisciplinary studies and explore possible career options by gaining experience with 3D scanning and data processing at the Access 3D lab. ​

Myriam Gabriela Rodriguez is an Anthropology undergraduate student that focuses on Forensic Anthropology through a lens of structural violence and inequality. She received the CAS-VVS internship to conduct research on testing the accuracy of the CoxAGE3D software, which estimates the age-at-death of an individual. Her career aspirations are all based on academic research, humanitarian aid and structural violence within a forensic anthropology context. This project will enable her to contribute to the anthropology field by introducing new methods to expedite age estimation and demonstrate how new technologies, such as digital 3D scanning, can aid in the accurate application of methods long studied in anthropology, which is also one of her career goals.

Courtney Morgan has her BA and is working towards getting her MA. She is interested in forensic anthropology, human identification, human variation and trauma and pathology. In the fall semester, she'll be working with Dr. Jonathan Bethard on validating CoxAGE3D software program on the archeological collection from Transylvania to see if it is accurate or not. The CoxAGE3D software gives researchers estimated age at death. She'll work with Dr. Harrison and three other interns to validate this project. Her goal is to learn 3D scanning and data processing to apply this knowledge in her future career. 

Eva Pesta is an undergraduate student in the anthropology department who focuses on forensic anthropology and bioarchaeology. She received the CAS-VVS internship and scholarship along with three fellow students. Together they will develop a project that will focus on testing the accuracy of the CoxAGE3D software package. This software package (CoxAGE3D) suggests that researchers can estimate the age at death by uploading a three-dimensional scan of either the pubic symphysis, auricular surface, or acetabulum. She will be focusing on the auricular surface while her two team members focus on the other two mentioned. The goal for her research here at the lab as well as future research is to better understand a specific population of people. In this research that will be seen through common age-at-death estimation, which is helpful to both archaeological and forensic contexts. Her goals include museum work as well as academia, she is hoping to find a place in the world of academic research for forensics as well as bioarchaeology.

Classroom

Courses Taught: 
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​•Advanced Reporting
•Intermediate Sculpture
•Digital Archaeology
•Sustainable Tourism
•The Future of Food
•Research Methods for Sustainability
•Climate Change, Adaptation and Mitigation
•Waste Not, Want Not
•Drone Videography and Aerial Storytelling
•3D GIS and LiDAR
•Intro to Visual Communication
•Digital Dinosaurs
•Studies in Composition Research
•Digital Fabrication
•GIS for Planners
•Digital Imaging for Historians
•Digital Public Archaeology
•Applied Heritage and Sustainability Research
•Urban Spatial Analysis
•Human Osteology
•Graduate Seminar – Art and Art History
•Digital Humanities Capstone
•History Internship
•Sustainable Tourism Development
•Special Topics – Photography
•Biometry
•Terrestrial Lidar Field Methods
•Mobile Lidar Field Methods