CSE Alumni Dr. Aoyu WU Won IEEE VGTC Dissertation Award 2023

Dr. Aoyu WU, PhD alumni of Department of Computer Science & Engineering, won the esteemed IEEE VGTC Visualization Doctoral Dissertation Award 2023 for his work "Efficient Creation and Analysis of Visualizations for Data Communication". This remarkable achievement makes him the first recipient from Asia to receive this prominent award.

Expressing deep honor and appreciation upon receiving the award, Dr. Wu emphasized that this recognition symbolizes not only his personal accomplishment but also a collective triumph. He highlighted the shared dedication among researchers to advance and democratize data visualization and analytics through the power of AI approaches.

Reflecting on his achievement, he expressed his anticipation for the future. "With the rise of AI technologies like large language models (LLMs), I am eager to continue contributing to this vibrant and ever-evolving field. I look forward to exploring how generated models can make complex data easy to understand and analyze for everyone." He also expressed his hope to collaborate with more scholars in the future to push the boundaries of this field.

About the Award-Winning Dissertation

The focus of the dissertation pertains to the increasing need for public access to data and its analysis. As visualizations have become a prominent means of data communication, their widespread usage has posed difficulties in terms of readability and quality. Unlike conventional data formats such as tables, text, and images, visualizations are not treated as a distinct "data type." Consequently, there is a noticeable lack of efficient techniques and workflows to handle visualizations on a large scale. His research navigates the complexities that emerge as data visualizations become increasingly integral in sharing public data, a topic of increasing relevance in today's data-driven world. The main challenge can be broken down into several research problems, which can be categorized along two dimensions.

About IEEE VGTC Award

The IEEE VGTC Awards program recognizes and honors individuals who have made a significant contribution to the community through their research and/or service. Furthermore, we seek out nominations of individuals that enable us to recognize both the diversity of individuals, as well as diversity of contributions, from the community at large.

The Doctoral Dissertation Award recognizes outstanding academic research and development in the field. The dissertations must address a relevant topic. The selection criteria include: the significance and impact of the scholarly contributions of the work, and the clarity with which these contributions are communicated.

Congratulations again to Dr. Aoyu Wu.

VGTC Visualization Dissertation Award - IEEE Computer Society 2023

Dr. Aoyu Wu, the first awardee from Asia of the award, was a 2022 PhD graduate of the CSE department supervised by Prof. Huamin Qu.

CSE PhD alumni Dr. Aoyu Wu achieved the IEEE VGTC Dissertation Award 2023. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University.