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I hold an appointment as full professor in Visual Data Analytics at the Department of Information and Computing Sciences, Utrecht University. Before this, I worked as full professor of Multiscale Visual Analytics in the (SVCG) group at the Bernoulli Institute, Faculty of Science and Engineering, University of Groningen.
Research focus
- information visualization and visual analytics (techniques, system design)
- big data multiscale visualization (large hierarchies, graphs, trail sets)
- visualization for AI (dimensionality reduction, explaining machine learning)
- shape/image processing (skeletonization, segmentation, fairing, reconstruction)
- interactive systems design (interaction and animation for data exploration)
- scientific visualization (GPU-based and PDE-based visualization techniques)
- program analysis (reverse engineering, software evolution, fact extraction and querying)
Publications
Google Scholar profile
The Book: Data Visualization - Principles and Practice
The second edition of my book (published by CRC Press) provides a practical introduction to data visualization. It targets (under)graduate students and professionals interested in designing and implementing visualization applications to explore and understand data at large. Topics covered: scalar, vector, tensor, image, volume, and information visualization.
New in the 2nd edition: C/C++ code samples, exam questions, projects, datasets, and ParaView scenarios.
First edition: 2008. Second edition: 2014. Chinese edition: 2018. Over 5000 copies sold (2018).
Teaching
Here are the main courses I deliver or have delivered. Links to courses here.
- Visual analytics for big data (MSc/industry-professional levels)
- Scientific visualization (MSc level)
- Multimedia retrieval (MSc level)
- Software maintenance and evolution (MSc level)
- Computer graphics (BSc/MSc levels)
- Software quality assurance and testing (BSc level)
PhD Students
Below is a list of the PhD students having me as thesis director. More information and links to theses here.
- Lucian Voinea (2007, software visualization)
- Dennie Reniers (2009, 3D shape processing)
- George Byelas (2009, software visualization)
- Mariam Sensalire (2009, software comprehension)
- Ozan Ersoy (2013, network visualization)
- Bertjan Broeksema (2014, big data analytics)
- Jacek Kustra (2015, 3D shape processing)
- Andre Sobiecki (2016, 3D shape processing)
- Rafael M. Martins (2016, multivariate analytics)
- Danilo B. Coimbra (2016, multivariate analytics)
- Renato R. da Silva (2016, multivariate analytics)
- Paulo E. Rauber (2017, visual machine learning)
- Cong Feng (2017, 3D shape procesing)
- Matthew van der Zwan (2018, 3D trail analytics)
- Eduardo Vernier (multivariate analytics)
- Lucas Pagliosa (time-series visual analytics)
- Mateus Espadoto (deep learning for visual analytics)
- Caio Rodrigues (visualizing classifier decision maps)
- Samuel Martins (visual analytics for deep learning in brain research)
- Jieying Wang (multiscale skeletons for image/field analysis)
- Xiaorui Zhai (interactive visual analytics of high-dimensional data)
- Xingyu Chen (visual analytics for shape analysis and retrieval)
- Youngjoo Kim (big-data dimensionality reduction)
- Gerben Hettinga (image vectorization)
- Zonglin Tian (effective multidimensional projections)
MSc Students
I have supervised 80+ MSc students as main director. Selected theses here.
PhD Research
My PhD research (2000) was on the design and implementation of VISSION, an application building environment for VIsualization and SImulation with Object-oriented Networks. VISSION offers object-oriented tools for scientific visualization and real-time interaction with running simulations, is easily extendable with user code, and creates visual programming tools and GUIs automatically from object-oriented code. VISSION proved (relevant at the time) that all one can achieve in Java can also be done in C++, only better, cleaner, and easier.
Research valorization
My work led to a successful (>2M EUR turnover) start-up company (SolidSource BV) specialized in tools and services for the visual analysis of big data for industry-scale software maintenance.