Arpit NARECHANIA

Biography

Arpit Narechania is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). He obtained a BS (B.Tech) in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Mandi, India, and a PhD in Computer Science from Georgia Institute of Technology, USA. Prior to academia, Arpit was a founding engineer at multiple startups in the FinTech and EdTech sectors that focused on enhancing financial inclusion in India, optimizing investments in the US stock market, and innovating how middle school physics is taught. Arpit has also contributed to digital governance initiatives for the Government of India.

As an academic now, Arpit's main research interests are in visual analytics, information visualization, and human-computer interaction (HCI), with particular focus on guidance systems, analytic provenance, natural language interfaces, and geovisualization. By employing a three-pronged data-user-task centered design approach, Arpit builds interactive systems that enable users to understand data and make informed decisions. He has collaborated with industry leaders such as Adobe Research, Microsoft Research, and Ford Motor Company, leading interdisciplinary projects that have resulted in multiple patents, publications, and product integrations. An advocate for open science, Arpit has also open-sourced many of his systems to broaden access to his work.

Arpit's scholarly contributions have been published in top-tier journals and conferences, including IEEE TVCG, IEEE VIS, and ACM CHI. For his dissertation work, Arpit was named a Foley Scholar finalist at Georgia Tech, the highest department honor for PhD students. At Georgia Tech, Arpit affiliated with the Center for Teaching and Learning, obtaining a Tech-to-Teaching (T2T) certification meant to train future faculty; in addition, he has been a recipient of a prestigious Graduate Teaching Fellowship and an Outstanding Teaching Assistant (TA) Award.