For the second straight year, pioneering work in data visualization and visual analytics at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) has received attention with a major IEEE award.
Elke Rundensteiner, the William Smith Dean’s Professor in Computer Science and Founding Head of WPI’s Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Program, will receive the 1999 VIS Test-of-Time Award at the upcoming Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Visualization Conference for work done 25 years ago resulting in a publication co-authored with graduate student Ying-Huey Fua and the late computer science professor Matthew O. Ward.
This award honors articles published at previous IEEE conferences that have withstood the test of time by remaining relevant years later and that have had significant impact and influence on future advances within and beyond the visualization community, according to the award’s organizers. Award selection is based on measures such as the numbers of citations, the quality and influence of its ideas, and other criteria.
In its notification, the award committee called the paper, “Hierarchical parallel coordinates for exploration of large datasets,” a seminal work that was the most cited paper from VIS 1999. It has had a profound and lasting impact on data visualization, the award committee noted.
“The novel enhancements proposed in this paper have since been widely adopted not only in data visualization, but more generally in data mining and database research. It has been recognized through inclusion in textbooks and surveys, and still receives citations today,” the committee wrote.
Rundensteiner said she is thrilled to attend the 2024 IEEE VIS Conference next month in St. Pete Beach, Florida, where she will accept this prestigious award on behalf of her team during the Plenary Ceremony. In her acceptance speech, she hopes to inspire both current and future researchers to produce forward-thinking award-winning work by encouraging them to boldly pursue their passion without feeling constrained by the existing norm. She said she believes that “it can be invigorating to examine the current state-of-the-art to identify its potential issues—whether in data, applications, or user utilization—and then to boldly address these challenges by integrating diverse ideas from multiple disciplines to develop technology for people and the future.”
“I would be remiss if I were not to highlight the tremendous contributions and impact that my late colleague Matt Ward has made on not only on the VIS field but also on me personally as a researcher. Our close collaboration at the intersection of visualization and data analytics over a 17-year time span–from 1998 to 2014–let to a series of seven National Science Foundation (NSF) research grants and one National Security Agency (NSA) grant,” Rundensteiner said.
“Working closely with inspiring colleagues like Ward and talented students is incredibly rewarding,” Rundensteiner added. “I encourage finding collaborators you respect and enjoy working with and fostering an environment where everyone can freely contribute their ideas as you explore the world’s most vexing problems.”
Last year, Rundensteiner accepted the InfoVis 20-Year Test-of-Time Award for another pioneering work, namely, on interactive hierarchical dimension ordering, spacing, and filtering for the exploration of high-dimensional datasets she did with Ward and former PhD students Jing Yang and Wei Pang in 2003.