Visualization tools are essential for deriving meaning from the avalanche of data we are generating today. To facilitate an understanding of the complex relationships embedded in this data, visualization research leverages the power of the human perceptual and cognitive systems, encoding meaning through images and enabling exploration through human-computer interactions.
Miriah Meyer designs visualization systems that support exploratory, complex data analysis tasks by scientists who are analyzing large amounts of heterogeneous data. These systems allow users to validate their computational models, to understand their underlying data in detail, and to develop new hypotheses and insights. Her research process includes five distinct stages, from targeting a specific group of domain experts and their scientific goals through validating the efficacy of the visualization system. In this talk she will describe a user-centered, methodological approach to designing and developing visualization tools and present several successful visualization projects in the areas of genomics and systems biology. She will also discuss generalizations that arise from working on focused, visualization projects as well as the long-term implications of the field.
Miriah Meyer is a postdoctoral research fellow in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University and a visiting scientist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. She obtained her bachelor's degree in astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University, and earned a PhD in computer science from the University of Utah where she worked in the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute. Meyer is the recipient of a NSF/CRA Computing Innovation Fellow Award for her work on collaboratively designing visualization tools for biological data. She was also awarded an AAAS Mass Media Fellowship that landed her a stint as a science writer for the Chicago Tribune. She is a cofounder of the Data Visualization Initiative at the Broad Institute, and she is on the organizing committee for the inaugural IEEE Symposium on Biological Data Visualization.
