Visual Analytics: Building a Vibrant and Resilient National Science

Speaker:	Dr. Pak Chung WONG
		Chief Scientist
		Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)
		USA

Title:		"Visual Analytics: Building a Vibrant and Resilient
		 National Science"

Date:		Monday, 8 February 2010

Time:		4:00pm - 5:00pm

Venue:		Lecture Theater F (near lifts 25/26), HKUST


Abstract:

"Visual Analytics" is a young information analytics research and
development area. The term first appeared officially in computer science
literature in 2004. Between 2004 and 2005, a panel of internationally
known multidisciplinary scholars convened and formally defined the then
new study area as "the science of analytical reasoning facilitated by
interactive visual interfaces." The definition was deliberately chosen to
be broad enough to encompass a wide range of established research and fill
the gaps that individual research disciplines did not adequately cover.
Since then, the community of visual analytics has grown rapidly and
attracted academic, industrial, and governmental attention from around the
world.

In this talk, I will discuss the early events that led to the birth of the
area of visual analytics; its four major research and development
sub-areas recommended by the international panel in 2005; its scholastic
achievement and intellectual development as covered in published
literature and on the Internet; and its education, professional
development, and international outreach efforts undertaken by the
community. I will also share future challenges facing the community and
demonstrate cutting-edge visual analytics technology developed at the
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in the United States.


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Biography:

Pak Chung Wong is a chief scientist and project manager at the Pacific
Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Washington State, USA. He has led
and performed research and development on information technology and
scientific computation at PNNL for over a decade. His research interests
include visual analytics, predictive analytics, visualization, privacy and
security, and social computing. He co-edited the first ever special
journal issue on visual analytics (IEEE Computer Graphics and
Applications, 24(5)) in 2004, co-chaired the first international
conference on visual analytics (IEEE Visual Analytics Science and
Technology (VAST)) in 2006, and has continued to be an active technical
and professional contributor of the international community. In the past,
he has served as general chair, program chair, and paper chair at major
visualization conferences including IEEE Visualization (Vis), IEEE
Information Visualization (InfoVis), and SPIE Conference on Visualization
and Data Analysis (VDA). In 2004, he led a team of PNNL researchers to win
first place at the annual IEEE InfoVis visualization contest. He received
a PhD in computer science from the University of New Hampshire, USA