Big Data in Pictures: Opportunities and Challenges for Data Visualization
Speaker: Dr. Huamin Qu,
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Time: 10:00 am, April 29, 2014
Venue: Meeting Room 202, Office Building, Software Campus
Host: Prof. Baoquan Chen
Abstract:Data visualization is widely considered a key to big data analytics andhas become a hot topic recently. In the 2012 press release of ObamaGovernment's big data initiative, it specially mentioned a US $2 millionfunding support to train undergraduates to use graphical and visualizationtechniques for complex data. At 2013, Tableau Software, a companymarketing interactive data visualization products, raised $254M in IPO andits market value reached almost 4 billion US dollars. Stories about datavisualization and its roles in the big data era are covered in the NewYork Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review,Wired, etc.
In this talk, I will first briefly introduce the history of datavisualization, its main research problems and major approaches. I willthen discuss the relationships between data visualization and relatedfields like data mining and human-computer interaction. After that I willtalk about opportunities and challenges for data visualization research inthe big data era. Finally, I will present three ongoing visualizationresearch projects conducted at the Hong Kong University of Science andTechnology: 1) visualization of social media data like Twitter data; 2)visualization of data collected from online education platforms likeCoursera; 3) visualization of trajectory data and air quality data forurban informatics.
Bio:Huamin Qu is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Scienceand Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Hismain research interests are in visualization and computer graphics. He iscurrently an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Visualizationand Computer Graphics (TVCG), a paper co-chair for IEEE VIS'14, and asteering committee member of the IEEE Pacific Visualization Conferencesand the VINCI conferences. He has co-edited five special issues/sectionsfor various journals including a theme issue "Big Data Visualization" forthe IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications at 2013. He received anHonorable Mention for Best Paper Award at IEEE Visualization 2009, an IBMFaculty Award at 2009, and a best paper award at the 13th InternationalConference on Computer-Aided Design and Computer Graphics at 2013.Students under his supervision have also received various awards includingthe HKICT Best Innovation and Research Award, IBM PhD Fellowship Award,and SENG PhD Research Excellence Award. He obtained a BS in Mathematicsfrom Xi'an Jiaotong University, China, an MS and a PhD in Computer Sciencefrom the Stony Brook University.
