VisInPractice

The VisInPractice associated event at IEEE VIS 2022 will feature four panels on the practice of visualization.

The VisInPractice program is an opportunity for visualization practitioners and researchers to meet and share experiences, insights, and ideas in applying data visualization and visual analytics to real use cases. Our goal is to acknowledge successful transfers of visualization research into applications as well as current visualization practices in industry.

This year’s Vis in Practice will be a hybrid event, with panel sessions being simultaneously in person and streamed.

Program

VisInPractice will take place on Monday, October 17, 2021 between 9:00 and 5:00 Central Daylight Time (GMT -5)

Panel: VisInPractice: Diversity of Ideas (moderated by: Sudhanshu Semwal) 9:00 - 10:15

Description: This VisInPractice panelist present their mature body of work–providing glimpses of Ideas and application gems, suggesting perhaps sample of some new areas for VisInPractice:

The panelists include:

  • Hanes Oliveira, Symmetrix
  • David William Silva, Symmetrix
  • Hector Gerardo Perez Gonzalez, University Autonoma de San Luis Potosy
  • Terry Janssen, University of Honolulu
  • Alireza Taheri, Sharif University of Technology

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Hanes Oliveira received his M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Colorado Colorado Springs 2020 and works as a Research Software Engineer at Symetrix Corporation and Algemetric, investigating new encoding mechanisms for images, compression, and blockchain. Initially involved with game and web development in Brazil, Hanes progressed in the last five years to focus on the research side of systems and information representation.

David William Silva is a Senior Research Scientist at Symetrix Corporation and Algemetric and is responsible for the research and development of innovative products related to security, privacy, and efficient computation powered by applied mathematics. David started his career as a Software Engineer focused on web services and agile software development, which led him to be involved with several projects from startups to government and large corporations. After 17 years of conducting R&D in Brazil, David moved to the US to engage in scientific research applied to a global industry of security and privacy, which has been his focus for the past seven years.

Héctor G. Pérez-Gonzalez is a full-time research professor at the Engineering School – Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosi (FI-UASLP) in Mexico. He received his MSc in Computer Science from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico in 1994. He earned his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs in 2003.Author of research articles and book chapters on Automatic Software Design and Human Computer interaction. He has been a speaker at international conferences in USA, Canada, UK, Spain, Portugal, and Singapore. He is paper reviewer of national journal articles and international conferences such as OOPSLA/SPLASH and he is Leader of university-industry development projects. Dr. Pérez-Gonzalez was a 2014 Lee Kimche McGrath Worldwide Fellowship Recipient from the International Association of Science and Technology Centers. He is the manager of the Interactive Museum of Applied Technology (IMAT) project of FI-UASLP. Dr. Pérez-Gonzalez led the creation group of the new Intelligent Systems Engineering academic program at UASLP and directed the Computer Engineering program ranked number one in the country by the Mexican National Evaluation Center. He is a member of the Mexican National System of Researchers. He is a member of the Mexican Software Engineering Research Network. His current research focuses on computer science education, Quantum Software Engineering and Mixed Realities.

Terry Janssen (TJ) is a career computer scientist and information technologist, with offices in DC, Honolulu and Colorado Springs. He is a fluent programmer and has developed a large library of software prototypes, for demonstrating advanced technology, including AI and machine learning; some under US Patent. In 2021 be obtained a Certificate in Quantum Computing from the University of Maryland and was assigned leadership of Quantum for an agency within the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community (DOD/IC). Dr. Janssen is working within the DOD/IC to establish quantum use cases, and research and development initiatives, to prepare for the future, i.e., if/when quantum hardware becomes reliable and can be scaled to meet DOD/IC, NATO and other partner requirements. He is working with quantum hardware-based laboratories, and quantum computer as a service (QCaaS) providers. His employers over his career have included Lockheed Martin (for 8 years) and DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory (for 6 years). He has received awards for his contributions. He has written over 50 book, journal, and conference papers, and given countless presentations. He holds a Ph.D. in Information Technology from the Volgenau, School of Engineering at George Mason University (1997), and an M.S. in Computer Science from Boston University (1985).

Alireza Taheri is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering with an emphasis on Social and Cognitive Robotics at Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran. He is the head of the Social and Cognitive Robotics Lab at Sharif University of Technology. His research focuses on designing/using Social and Cognitive Robotics, Virtual Reality Systems, and Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) platforms for education and rehabilitation of children with special needs (e.g. children with autism, children with hearing problems, children with dyslexia, etc.). His researches include robots’ design and fabrication, serious games’ design, artificial intelligence and control, conducting educational/clinical interventions for children, developing cognitive architectures for social robots, mathematical modeling of participants’ behaviors during HRI, and empowering robots to analyze users’ behaviors automatically and then react adaptively.

Panel: Vis x Accessibility (moderated by: Anamaria Crisan) 10:45 - noon

Description: This panel discussion will explore the opportunities and challenges of making data visualizations accessible toward individuals with vision, motor, and cognitive/neurological disabilities.

The panelists include:

  • Frank Elavsky, Carnegie Mellon University / Apple
  • Jamie Tanner, The New York Times
  • Kai Chang, Google
  • Jennifer Mankoff, University of Washington

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Frank Elavsky is a design engineer turned researcher who is currently pursuing a PhD studying the intersection of data interaction and accessibility at Carnegie Mellon University’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute. He is also the author of Chartability, a set of heuristics for evaluating the accessibility of data experiences. Before pursuing his PhD, Elavsky was a lead contributor to Visa Chart Components, a design system component library of charts and graphs built with a focus on accessibility.

Jaime Tanner (she/her) is a designer and developer focused on making accessible charts, maps, and data graphics. She has an M.S. in Data Visualization from Parsons School of Design and has spent the last few years working at Visa as part of the Visa Chart Components core team. She recently joined the New York Times as an Accessibility Visuals Editor.

Kai Chang (@syntagmatic) is a UX engineer at Google focusing on data visualization tools and data accessibility. Previously, design technologist at Stamen Design. He contributes to open source efforts and experiments around datavis, examples at his personal website.

Jennifer Mankoff is the Richard E. Ladner Professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington. Her research is focused on accessibility through giving people the voice, tools and agency to advocate for themselves. She strives to bring both structural and personal perspectives to her work. For example, her recent work in fabrication of accessible technologies considers not only innovative tools that can enable individual makers but also the larger clinical and sociological challenges to disseminating and sharing designs. Similarly, her work in the intersection of mental health and discrimination uses sensed data to explore how external risks and pressures interact with people’s responses to challenging moments. Jennifer received her PhD at Georgia Tech, advised by Gregory Abowd and Scott Hudson, and her B.A. from Oberlin College.

Panel: Bridging Academia, Industry, and Government (moderated by: Chris Weaver) 14:00 - 15:15

Description: Visualization practitioners increasingly work in ways that span sectors, requiring extra care and effort to develop common ground and coordinate with people having diverse backgrounds, skills, interests, needs, and perspectives. This panel will focus on experiences in developing a broader reach for applications of visualization and the considerations and practices that have arisen from those experiences.

  • Bill Endres, University of Oklahoma
  • Dave King, Exaptive
  • Kim Klockow-McClain, NOAA
  • Johanna Schmidt, VRVis

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Bill Endres is an Associate Professor in the English Department at the University of Oklahoma. He uses a variety of advanced imaging techniques (multispectral, Reflectance Transformation Imaging, 3D-capture) to digitalize, recovery lost content, and study early illuminated manuscripts. Because these manuscripts are a play of light, he also develops interfaces to present and engage them in dynamic ways, including for virtual and augmented reality.
Website: http://lichfield.ou.edu
Twitter: @BillEndres

Dave King has been involved in high-tech entrepreneurship since the early 1990s. A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and computer science and a humanities concentration in the social sciences, Dave has spent 20+ years working in software development – from system architecture and large-scale database design, to the psychology of user interfaces, to the management of software development teams. Dave first helped pioneer paperless manufacturing information systems in the electronics industry, then focused on designing software platforms for ad-hoc data analysis. In 2011, Dave saw the need for a more modular and cross-disciplinary approach to data science and founded Exaptive in order to pursue ways that technology and community can be combined to facilitate innovation. Data visualization has always been a central component to his work. In 2015, his company was named by Gartner as one of five Cool New Vendors in the Life Sciences, and selected by the Bloor Group as one of the top 10 technologies to watch. Dave is also a photographer and author, and speaks internationally about data, technology, and the future of innovation.
Website: https://www.exaptive.com

Kim Klockow is a Research Scientist with the National Severe Storms Laboratory Behavioral Insights Unit. Her research involves behavioral science focused on weather and climate risk, specifically issues in the communication of forecast uncertainty and hazardous weather warnings.
Website: https://www.nssl.noaa.gov/research/social/
Twitter: @kimklockow

Johanna Schmidt studied computer science at the TU Wien, focusing on visual computing. She received her master’s degree in 2011 and afterward continued with a Ph.D. in visualization at the TU Wien, which she finished in 2016. She worked as a scientist at AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, where she was responsible for developing visual analytics solutions for domain experts working with large movement data. In 2019 she joined the VRVis, where she became Head of the Visual Analytics group in July 2020. Johanna Schmidt’s main research focuses on information visualization and visual analytics of large time-series data. She works with interactive visual systems supporting tasks like data quality assessment, decision-making, and predictive modeling.
Website: https://www.vrvis.at/ueber-uns/team/infos/schmidt-johanna

Panel: Integrating Research and Products (moderated by: Zhicheng (Leo) Liu) 15:45 - 17:00

Description: Being successful in both research and products is often difficult, requiring carefully choosing project topics and balancing between multiple goals. This panel will focus on the factors and processes in transferring research results into products, as well as experiences on how products can inspire and shape research ideas.

The panelists include:

  • Richard Brath, Uncharted
  • Dominik Moritz, Carnegie Mellon University
  • Liu Ren, Bosch
  • Vidya Setlur, Tableau

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Richard Brath is a partner at Uncharted software where he oversees visual innovation since 2003 for software companies and commercial organizations, ranging from some of the biggest financial companies to analytics startups. Richard’s visualizations are in use by hundreds of thousands of users daily. Richard is critical of some foundational assumptions of visualization, such as the role of text or shape in visualization, which in turn lead to a PhD. Richard has recently authored Visualizing with Text and previously co-authored Graph Visualization and Analysis together with David Jonker. Richard enjoys researching and designing new kinds of visualizations and analytics for graphs and text, as well as writing and presenting on them.

Dominik Moritz is on the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University where he co-leads the Data Interaction Group at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute and manages the visualization team in Apple’s machine learning organization. At CMU, his group’s research develops interactive systems that empower everyone to effectively analyze and communicate data. Dominik’s systems (Vega-Lite, Falcon, Draco, Voyager, and others) have won awards at academic venues (e.g. IEEE VIS and CHI), are widely used in industry, and by the Python and JavaScript data science communities. Dominik did his PhD at the Paul G. Allen School at the University of Washington, where he was advised by Jeff Heer and Bill Howe.
Website: www.domoritz.de
Twitter: @domoritz

Liu Ren is currently the VP and Chief Scientist in Bosch Research North America and Bosch Center of Artificial Intelligence. He is responsible for shaping strategic directions and developing cutting-edge technologies in AI focusing on integrated Human-Machine Intelligence for Robert Bosch Corporation, a multi-national corporation with over $70 Billion revenue and more than 400,000 employees worldwide. As the responsible global head, Liu oversees research activities conducted by several research departments and teams located in the Silicon Valley (U.S.), Pittsburgh (U.S.), Bangalore (India), and Renningen (Germany). His teams focus on research topics such as Big Data Visual Analytics, XAI, Natural Language Processing (NLP), 3D perception and XR, Audio Analytics, Robotics for industrial AI application areas including autonomous driving, driver assistance systems (ADAS), smart manufacturing, building security solutions, BSH home appliance, and more. In particular, he has built the team from the ground up and leads the efforts of developing novel visual analytics/XAI solutions for Bosch’s industrial AI application fields ranging from smart manufacturing, IoT to autonomous driving. This has opened the door to the exciting industry AI field for the visual analytics community. Liu has won Best Paper Award (2018, 2020) and Best Paper Honorable Mention Award (2016, 2022) for big data visual analytics in IEEE Visualization Conference. Liu received his Ph.D. and M.Sc. degrees in Computer Science from Computer Science Department, Carnegie Mellon University.
Website: https://sites.google.com/site/liurenshomepage/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liu-ren-b7a5362/
Twitter: @ren63701438

Vidya Setlur is the director of Tableau Research. She leads an interdisciplinary team of research scientists in areas including data visualization, multimodal interaction, statistics, applied ML, and NLP. She earned her doctorate in Computer Graphics in 2005 at Northwestern University. Prior to joining Tableau, she worked as a principal research scientist at the Nokia Research Center for seven years. Her personal research interests lie at the intersection of natural language processing and computer graphics. Her research combines concepts and methods from information retrieval, human perception, and cognitive science to help users effectively interact with devices and information in their environment.
Website: https://research.tableau.com/user/vidya-setlur
Twitter: @vsetlur

The VisInPractice 2022 Team

  • Anamaria Crisan, Tableau Research
  • Zhicheng (Leo) Liu, University of Maryland
  • Sudhanshu Semwal, University of Colorado (Colorado Springs)
  • Chris Weaver, University of Oklahoma

Email: vip@ieeevis.org

Twitter: @visinpractice

Previous VisInPractice Events