Abstract

Supercomputing and advanced imaging/sensing technologies enable scientists to study complex phenomena at unprecedented precision, resulting in an explosive growth of data. The size of the collected information about the Internet and mobile device users is expected to be even greater, a daunting challenge we must address in order to make sense and maximize utilization of all the available information. Visualization transforms large quantities of, often multiple-dimensional, data into graphical representations that exploit the high-bandwidth channel of the human visual system, leveraging our brain's remarkable ability to detect patterns and draw inferences. Visualization has thus become an essential tool in many areas of study involving large, complex data. I will present several effective visualization designs created by my group as either exploratory or explanatory tools for large data found in real-world applications.