Seminar - Prof John Stasko, Georgia Institute of Technology

The Value of Visualization for Exploring, Presenting, and Understanding Data

Monday 27th June

14:30 - 16:00

A130 (College Building, First Floor)

“Everyone’s talking about data these days. People, organizations, and businesses are seeking better ways to analyze, understand, and communicate their data. While a variety of approaches can be taken to address this challenge, my own research has focused on data visualization.”

In this talk, John will describe the particular advantages that visualization brings to data analysis beyond other techniques. He will present three key tenets for success in data visualization:

  • understanding purpose,
  • embracing interaction, and
  • identifying value.

To help support this premise, John will draw upon a number of current research projects from his Information Interfaces Group at Georgia Tech (including CiteVis and OnSet), and recount a few anecdotes and experiences that have helped to form his views. 

John Stasko is a Professor in the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he has been on the faculty since 1989. He is a widely published and internationally recognized researcher in the areas of Information Visualization and Visual Analytics, approaching each from a Human-Computer Interaction perspective. John has 13,000 scholar citations, putting him in the top 50 on Human Computer Interaction.

John has been Papers/Program Co-Chair for the IEEE Information Visualization (InfoVis) and the IEEE Visual Analytics Science and Technology (VAST) Conferences, General Chair for the IEEE VIS meeting in 2013 in Atlanta, and has served on numerous journal editorial boards. He received the IEEE Visualization and Graphics Technical Committee (VGTC) Visualization Technical Achievement Award in 2012, and was named an ACM Distinguished Scientist in 2011, an IEEE Fellow in 2014, and a member of the ACM CHI Academy in 2016.

In 2013 he also became an Honorary Professor in the School of Computer Science at the Univ. of St. Andrews in Scotland.