Robert Kosara
Location: (Charlotte, NC)
Personal Research Web Page: http://eagereyes.org/
Keywords: information visualization, infovis, theory, perception, user studies, empirical studies, communication
Posted on: Thursday, April 29th, 2010
Broad Research Area: Graphics / Visualization
Research Interests:
My interests are in two very different fields:
* Foundations of visualization: how does it work, how do we read visualization, how do we understand data that is presented visually, etc.
* Visualization for visual communication: how can visualization be used to more effectively communicate complex data to broad audiences?
Visualization is a very applied field, and that is a good thing. But we also need to work on understanding its foundations better: how do we attach meaning to visual shapes? How do we read information from visualizations? What roles does the structure of the visualization play (in addition to the basic value encodings)? How can we build better models that will allow us to make testable predictions, like a real science?
At the same time, visualization is a great way to get people interested in data. And there is more data available today than there ever has been. But how do we provide better visual means to communicate that data? How can we make visualizations fun and engaging without losing their ability to clearly and correctly get data across? How can we employ ideas from storytelling to get more information across?
The Visualization Center at UNC Charlotte is one of the largest concentrations of faculty and graduate students working in visualization in the U.S. We have state-of-the-art hardware, great topics to work on, and interesting people to work with.
Contact Information:
Email: rkosara@uncc.edu
