City Data Science Institute launched

The giCentre is a member of the newly-launched City Data Science Institute, an initiative that brings together data intensive, AI and data visualisation expertise and data-driven research in a variety of disciplines such as healthcare, finance, energy, transport and the creative industries. This interdisciplinary hub is aimed at fostering collaborations by connecting experts across the University and in the wider community, including industry partners and other universities.

More information about other members and the full range of disciplines involved is available in the Institute’s website.

Panos Giannopoulos joins giCentre

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Welcome to Panos Giannopoulos, who has joined the giCentre as a Lecturer in Algorithms/Computational Geometry. His research interests include geometric optimisation, approximation algorithms and fixed-parameter (in)tractability. He was previously at Middlesex University and holds a Habilitation from Free University of Berlin (Germany), PhD in Computer Science (Utrecht University) and MSc in Computer Science (Imperial College London).

Fully-funded PhD studentships at giCentre

The School of Mathematics, Computer Science and Engineering is offering a limited number of fully-funded PhD studentships.

These provide an excellent opportunity to study for a PhD at the giCentre. We are currently looking for candidates who are interested in topics across data visualisation and data science. We have a particular interest in visual data science that use visual approaches to doing data science. See our best papers and have a look at some of the PhD topics that we’d like to supervise… or propose your own. If you are interested, please email us on gicentre@city.ac.uk, either indicating which proposal interests you or giving us your own specific ideas.

giCentre is a Research Centre of about 15 academics, researchers and PhD students who are working at the forefront of information visualisation and visual data science. We contribute to the Department's hugely successful MSc in Data Science programme and have close working relationships with the other Research Centres in the department. We have a good working space and environment and welcome new researchers joining or otherwise interacting with our group.

These studentships will be competitive. You'll need a good degree in a related area (computer science or other quantitative subject). Your application will benefit from early interaction with us, so please do get in touch with as soon as you can, well before the studentship deadline of 7th March.

These studentship give recipients a tax-free stipend per year (currently £16,000) for three years and will pay UK/EU tuition fees. Successful candidates will also be able to be involved in teaching support. Full details are on the university website. Note that the 14 listed there are for across the whole university; we would only expect three to be available for our department.

VIS Best Poster Award - hat-trick for giCentre

The giCentre strikes again this year, after winning the VAST Best Poster in 2016, and the InfoVis Best Poster in 2017. We are delighted to announce that our poster Conveying uncertainty in archived war diaries with GeoBlobs has been awarded the IEEE InfoVis Best Poster 2018.
 
In collaboration with The National Archives we explored options to visualize uncertainty in troop movement data derived from handwritten first word war UK military diaries.

Come and see us in Berlin during the poster session on Wednesday evening. Meanwhile have a look at the poster abstract and a draft of the design. An interactive prototype will be on display during the opening event of the VIS Arts Program on Tuesday evening.

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We, Eirini Goudarouli, Steven Hirschorn (both with The National Archives), Johannes Liem, Jo Wood (both with the giCentre) and Charles Perin (with the giCentre and the University of Victoria) would like to thank the reviewers and InfoVis poster chairs.

Virtual Water OD Map

giCentre alumnus, contributor, friend and Tableau guru Rob Radburn has been using OD Maps to make sense of spatial flows.

You can see the revealing maps on Rob's Tableau Public page: Virtual Water - The unseen flow of water across America through agriculture

OD Maps are a great way to make sense of spatial flows and the way in which such flows vary spatially through maps showing information at two scales concurrently. Have a look at our featured paper that explains them: Visualisation of origins, destinations and flows with OD maps

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