Welcome!

My research is in the field of Data Visualization with an emphasis on mobile data visualization and visualization literacy. In the field of Mobile Data Visualization, we have developed novel techniques to provide context to viewers as they explore data on small screens. For the visualization literacy field, we have explored the use of Bloom’s taxonomy to introduce individuals to unfamiliar visualization techniques such as Treemaps and Parallel Coordinates Plots.

Through the ability of individuals to critically evaluate visualizations that they experience on social media and in their daily lives, they can get a better sense of the data that is being represented (or misrepresented). This is possible by increasing the visualization literacy of general audiences.

Timesteps of Hurricane Katrina annotated with Speedlines.
Joshi A. et al., Case study on visualizing hurricanes using illustration-inspired techniques. IEEE TVCG (2008)

Short Bio

Alark Joshi is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of San Francisco. His research focuses on developing and evaluating the ability of novel visualization techniques to communicate information for effective decision making and discovery. He received his postdoctoral training at Yale University, where he was a core member of the BioImage Suite team, whose mission is to develop and disseminate advanced image analysis and visualization software for widespread use.

His work has led to novel visualization techniques in fields as diverse as computational fluid dynamics, atmospheric physics, medical imaging and cell biology. Through the illustration-inspired visualization techniques that he developed, atmospheric physicists are able to visualize the time-varying nature of hurricanes more effectively. Some of his current work deals with developing and evaluating the performance of neurosurgeons on novel visualization and interaction techniques.