Vote for me!

Help me become a member of the IEEE VIS Steering Committee

Hi all, I decided to participate as a candidate for the election of the IEEE VIS Steering Committee, and I’d appreciate it if you could vote for me. IEEE VIS is the premier research conference in visualization, and it goes back to the early nineties. The steering committee is one of the most important positions in the conference organization. This body decides where the conference will go in the future. The steering committee ensures that the VIS conference (the “crown jewel” of our community) will keep being innovative and supportive of the community. Here is the way IEEE VIS describes the role:

The VIS Steering Committee (VSC) provides scientific and organizational oversight of IEEE VIS. It is the highest level committee at IEEE VIS and develops long term strategy and policy, appoints scientific content chairs, manages relationships with journals, ratifies specified VEC appointments and decisions, and oversees the evolution of the area model that defines the conference.

You are eligible to vote if you have been involved with the IEEE VIS conference in some way in the past. This is how the rule is spelled in the IEEE VIS website:

Any person who has contributed to the VIS conference in some capacity (including attending, authoring, speaking, organizing, or providing financial support) in at least one previous conference year is considered eligible to vote.

You can find the details about the elections and the candidates here. Note that if you have not registered as a voter before, you need to first fill out a form. See the details on the page I linked above.

So, if you are convinced to vote for me without reading the rest please do it now! The election deadline is October 15.

If you need more information, I have reproduced the statement I wrote for the election.

My statement

I am honored to be nominated for the Visualization Steering Committee position. If elected, I will do my best to provide innovative and responsible thinking for the scientific and organizational future of IEEE VIS. I have been an active community member for almost 20 years, participating and contributing as a PhD student first and then as a postdoc and faculty. Over the years, I have covered several organizational positions and have organized several events (panels, workshops, etc.), including co-founding the successful BELIV Workshop on evaluation in visualization, which became a pre-approved event at IEEE VIS. I am an Associate Professor at Northeastern University, affiliated with the Khoury College of Computer Sciences and the College of Art and Design. Previously, I was a faculty member at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering. My research spans many areas of visualization, including applied, experimental, and theoretical work. Over the years, a large portion of my research has been devoted to the integration of automated and interactive methods in visualization. More recently, I have been focusing on the use of visualization as a way to understand the behavior of machine learning modes. I am a firm believer in the necessity of creating bridges between researchers and practitioners. For this reason, I have been active in building such bridges over the years. Most notably, in 2012, I started the Data Stories podcast (with Moritz Srefaner), which quickly became a major reference for the data visualization world across boundaries. If elected, I would be happy to promote initiatives that incentivize such exchanges and provide my expertise in the media space to expand the reach of IEEE VIS. In 2018, I developed an Information Visualization specialization for Coursera (made of 4 courses), providing training for thousands of people across the globe and contributing to educating people and supporting education across geographical boundaries. Education is crucial to training the future leaders of our community, and reaching people across geographical boundaries is essential to ensure everyone has a chance to contribute to our community. All these experiences, coupled with my long-standing contribution to visualization research, education, and outreach, can bring innovative elements and a unique outlook to IEEE VIS. I’d be delighted to make my experience available to the splendid IEEE VIS community to bring innovative elements and help sustain our future growth.

I hope you’ll be able to spare a few minutes to cast a vote for me! That would be enormously helpful.

Thanks!