I am an Associate Professor of Information Science at University of Colorado Boulder, Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies, and director of the CU Information Visions Lab (under construction!).
- đź“Š My research group focuses on the opportunities and barriers of public data communication, believing that our engagement, trust, and understanding of data is a critical societal challenge. My work is situated within the fields of Human-Computer Interaction and Information Visualization.
- 🧑‍💻 As an advocate for undergraduate computing education, I also publish pedagogical interventions that integrate social responsibility into core computing curriculum, and serve on the Computer Research Association’s Education (CRA-E) Board of Directors.
Before CU, I was an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Bucknell University, I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science from Tufts University with Robert Jacob, and worked (during a recent sabbatical) as a Visiting Scientist at MIT with Arvind Satyanarayan.
Students: In Spring 2025, I will be teaching INFO 4602: Information Visualization. We will meet MWF at 10:10am in the Continuing Education Center.
Explore my work
I believe that improving the public's engagement, trust, and understanding of data is a critical societal challenge. My research focuses on the opportunities and barriers of both data representations and data tools when they are embedded within our public sphere.
I believe that Computer Science departments must interrogate their core curricular structures to develop more socially responsible students in tech. I have worked to tightly couple responsibility with technical programming assignments in CS 1.
I am an advocate for primarily-undergraduate institutions (PUI) - both as environments that are positioned to confront society's most pressing sociotechnical problems, and also as institutions that offer a compelling balance of teaching and research for new faculty. I work to promote undergraduate research processes and products within my scholarly community, and see undergrad researchers as a critical (but often overlooked) group within academia.
Recent News (see older news)
- Mar: 🎉 Co-authored paper led by Akim Ndlovu (WPI) accepted to EuroVis 2025, and will be presented in Luxembourg in June - SurpriseExplora: Tuning and Contextualizing Model-derived Maps with Interactive Visualizations.
- Feb: Co-authored 2024 CRA (Computer Research Association) Quadrennial Paper - Empowering the Future Workforce: Prioritizing Education for the AI-Accelerated Job Market
- Feb: 🎉 Co-authored paper led by Jen Rogers (Tufts University) was accepted to ACM CHI Late-Breaking Work: House Advantage or House of Cards? Stacking the Deck for Data Videos Leads to Null Results
- Dec: Featured on the Changing Academic Life podcast: Evan Peck on considered choices and career moves: from liberal arts to a research uni
- Dec: Served on the selection committee for CRA’s Outstanding Undergraduate Research Awards
- Nov: Gave a guest talk at the Colorado School of Mines CS Seminar: Good for Scientists, Bad for Society: Why won’t data change our minds?
- Oct: Travelled to Salt Lake City to join the University of Utah for IEEE VIS, and host a virtual Visualization for Social Good meetup.
- Sep: A quick trip to Washington, DC where I participated in the keynote panel about AI + Ethics + Engineering Education for the 2024 NSF EEC Grantees Conference.
- Aug: Big welcome to the first graduate students in the Information Visions Lab, my new research group - Frida Mudsam (Ph.D.) and Adam Illig (MS). More detail soon!
- Aug: Started a new role as Associate Chair of Undergraduate Studies in CU Boulder’s Information Science Department.
- Jul: 🎉 Co-authored paper led by Dylan Wootton (MIT) was accepted to IEEE VIS. Charting EDA: Characterizing Interactive Visualization Use in Computational Notebooks with a Mixed-Methods Formalism. Co-authors: Dylan Wootton (MIT), Amy Rae Fox (MIT), and Arvind Satyanarayan (MIT)
- Jul: 🎉 Co-authored poster led by Akim Ndlovu (WPI) was accepted to IEEE VIS. SurpiseSync: Visual Exploration for De-biased Choropleth Maps. Co-authors: Akim Ndlovu (WPI), Hilson Shrestha (WPI), and Lane Harrison (WPI)
- May/June: Joined the Board of Directors for CRA-E (Computing Research Association - Education). Traveled to Chicago for annual Board meeting.
- Apr: Joined the Journal of Visualization and Interaction (JoVI) as an Associate Editor.
- Apr: Visited Harvey Mudd College and Pomona College to give a seminar talk on public data visualization and commmunication.