The giCentre is based in the Department of Computer Science at City St George’s, University London. We are an internationaly recognised research group that specialise in developing and applying new techniques for visual data analysis and presentation. This includes visual analytics and dashboards of 'big data' that drives complex decisions across a variety of domains; presentations of personalised data; visual data narratives; and visualisation art. We innovate with interactive visual techniques ranging from cartography and GIS to linked statistical graphics; explore connections with machine learning and intelligent agengs; and pursue state of the art user-centred visualisation design and evaluation methodologies. We work extensively with applied practitioners to create visualisations that solve their problems and make real-life impact. Some of the clients we have worked with include Transport for London, Nokia, eon energy, Advanced Infrastructure Technologies, MediaCom, Unruly Media, Willis Group, Leicestershire County Council, the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory and the BBC.
Joint work between TU Eindhoven and the giCentre has won Best Paper at IEEE PacificVis in Yokohama, Japan. The paper presents a new way of schematising maps using curved edges that preserve the relative area of features.
The technique offers new design possibilities for geovisualization that improve upon traditional automated simplification routines.
The Department of Computer Science is offering three Doctoral Scholarships each valued at around £50,000 over three years. This provides an ideal opportunity for outstanding researchers to join the giCentre team. Applications must be completed by 14th March 2014.
The deadline for 2014 scholarships has now passed, but we still welcome enquires from anyone wishing to study at the giCentre.
Welcome to Cagatay Turkay, the latest academic to join the staff at the giCentre. Catagay brings expertise in applied data science, specialising in interactive visualization of high-dimensional data, especially in the bioinformatics domain. After period of growth for the giCentre, this brings the number of academics and researchers in the group to 14.
Jason, Sarah, Aidan and Rick presented a selection of giCentre work at City Unrulyversity - a free popup university in the heart of Tech City. This initiative brings audiences from some of London's newest and most innovative technology startup companies together with academics from City University London to exchange new ideas in a stimulating and informal environment. This is the third event run by the giCentre at Unrulyversity. We will presenting a further evening sessions in January.
The giCentre attended IEEE VIS in Atlanta where we were involved in a full range of presentations. Work on provenance in visual analytics presented by Rick and transformation for understanding group movement presented by Natalia, formed our main contributions to VAST. In the Infovis track, Sarah presented our findings on creative user-centered visualization for energy analysts. Poster presentations from our PhD students included Alex's work on subjective survey classification of photographs and Donia's visual language for transitions in narrative visualization.
After working in the giCentre for five years as a Willis Research Fellow, we are delighted to announce that Aidan Slingsby has been appointed as lecturer in visual and analytic computing at City. He will continue research in uncertainty and movement visualization and will now also be teaching our undergraduate and postgraduate students in data visualization and analytics. His appointment comes at a time of significant expansion in the giCentre and Department of Computer Science with two new professorial appointments in visual analytics and a lectureship in data science.
We welcome Professors Natalia Andrienko and Gennady Andrienko who have just joined the giCentre as part-time academic staff. Natalia and Gennady are well-known and prolific research leaders in the Visual Analytics field. We look forward to their contribution to strengthen our teaching and research portfolio. They will also retain part-time lead scientist positions at the Fraunhofer Institute IAIS, dividing their time between the two institutions.