The What -- PolyPhy is an unconventional toolkit for reconstructing continuous networks out of sparse 2D or 3D data. Such data can be defined as collections of discrete points, or a continuous sparse scalar field. PolyPhy produces a scalar density field that defines the recovered network structure. With the help of GPU-accelerated simulation and visualization, PolyPhy provides domain experts an interactive way to reconstruct nearly any geometric data with an underlying network structure.

The How -- PolyPhy is the successor of Polyphorm which we are implementing in Python relying on Taichi as the GPU interface. Polyphorm is the original prototype C++ implementation of the MCPM algorithm and its volume visualization renderer. MCPM stands for Monte Carlo Physarum Machine, which is an algorithm inspired by the Physarum polycephalum or 'slime mold' and the prior work on simulating the organism. MCPM is innovative in its probabilistic nature, which allowed us to develop a robust 3D simulation of continuous network structures. A great example of such a structure and also the original motivation for MCPM is the structure of the intargalactic medium also known as the Cosmic web.

The Who -- Oskar Elek is the lead developer and designer of the underlying MCPM algorithm. Carlos Maltzahn is the key stakeholder. Joseph N. Burchett and Angus G. Forbes and Jan Ivanecky are the main intellectural contributors. Contributors also include great folks at Google Summer of Code, University of California in Santa Cruz, New Mexico State University and worldwide.

The Where -- The Universe, of course. But especially the former Creative Coding Lab and the Open Source Program Office at the University of California in Santa Cruz. On the Internet PolyPhy lives on polyphy.io and the associated GitHub repositories below.

The When -- Now. The when is now. Everything that happens now is happening now. - When will then be now? - Soon.