Data Visualization Initiative

Effective visualization makes complex data clear.

There is an opportunity to use visual representation in innovative ways to gain insights into biological data to effectively communicate science. To do this requires discovering novel visual encoding systems and applying existing ones in new ways. The challenge facing us in biology today is to make sense of the vast amounts of information. By bringing together an understanding of biology and principles from perception, cognition, and design, we help researchers meet the challenge by describing and developing meaningful visual representations of data.

Designing effective visual encodings of data requires a primary focus on the scientific questions and a thorough characterization of the visualization system. It is a process that translates the language of biology into the more abstract language of computer science and maps it to information visualization.

The Data Visualization Initiative aims to 1) establish processes for creating informative visualization models, 2) provide functional prototypes, and 3) build a community for people who apply visuals in their research. This effort is being lead by Bang Wong of Broad Institute and Miriah Meyer of Harvard.

People

Bang Wong

Creative Director, Broad Institute

Bang brings a background in biology and design to the initiative. His professional interest is in the visual expression of scientific concepts. As the Creative Director at Broad, he led the effort to design and build the DNAtrium, an exhibition space for genomic science. Now working with researchers, he is looking for ways to visually represent large-scale data sets to enable discovery.

Bang is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Art as Applied to Medicine at The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He is also the founder and principal of ClearScience, a design firm dedicated to the explanation of science. He holds a Masters degree in Immunology and a Masters degree in Medical Illustration both from Johns Hopkins.

Miriah Meyer

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Harvard University

Miriah is a computer scientist working in the field of visualization. Her research focuses on the synergistic relationship of visualization and interaction for enabling scientific discovery from large, multidimensional data. To the initiative Miriah brings technical experience in designing and developing interactive visual tools.

Miriah obtained her PhD in computer science from the University of Utah where she worked in the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute. She has published her work in visualization journals and at international conferences, and she has written stories for the Chicago Tribune newspaper as a AAAS Mass Media Fellow. She is a recipient of the NSF Computing Innovation Fellows award for her current work on collaboratively designing visualization tools for biological data.