News
MIP Award Co-chair at IEEE VISSOFT 2023
Prof. Andreas Kerren will serve as Most Influential Paper (MIP) Award co-chair of the 11th IEEE Working Conference on Software Visualization (VISSOFT 2023), which will take place in Bogotá, Colombia during 01–02 October, 2023.
Associate Chair at IVAPP 2024
Dr. Kostiantyn Kucher will serve as an associate chair with a focus on information visualization at the 15th International Conference on Information Visualization Theory and Applications (IVAPP), which will take place in Rome, Italy during 27–29 February, 2024.
Please note that the regular paper submission deadline for IVAPP 2024 is October 9, 2023, and for position papers, it is November 17, 2023 (further information).
Special Issue on Visual Analytics
Dr. Katerina Vrotsou and Dr. Kostiantyn Kucher are co-editing a special issue on Visual Analytics: Techniques and Applications of the Analytics journal (MDPI). Paper submission deadline is on November 30, 2023.

Best Reviewer Award at EuroVis 2023
In addition to the conference presentations described below, Dr. Kostiantyn Kucher has received the Best Reviewer Award at EuroVis 2023 in Leipzig.
iVis Group at EuroVis 2023
Prof. Andreas Kerren, Dr. Kostiantyn Kucher, and Zeyang Huang represented the iVis Group at EuroVis 2023 in Leipzig, Germany during June 12–16, 2023.
Zeyang Huang and Dr. Kucher (with Prof. Kerren among the co-authors) presented a STAR (survey article) titled "VA + Embeddings STAR: A State-of-the-Art Report on the Use of Embeddings in Visual Analytics"; and Dr. Angelos Chatzimparmpas (with Prof. Kerren among the co-authors) presented an invited CGF article titled "HardVis: Visual Analytics to Handle Instance Hardness Using Undersampling and Oversampling Techniques".
Additionally, Dr. Jorji Nonaka (with Dr. Takanori Fujiwara among the co-authors) presented a workshop paper titled "Reflections on the Developments of Visual Analytics Systems for the K Computer System Log Data" at VisGap '23.
VA+Embeddings Browser is Publicly Available Online
VA+Embeddings Browser, our visual survey of the use of embedding approaches in visual analytics, is now publicly available online:
The respective survey article (state-of-the-art report) will be presented at the STAR track of EuroVis 2023.
iVis Group at IEEE PacificVis 2023
Prof. Andreas Kerren, Dr. Takanori Fujiwara, and Peilin Yu represented the iVis Group at IEEE PacificVis 2023 in Seoul, Korea during April 18–21, 2023.
Prof. Kerren gave an invited talk at the VisMeetsAI '23 workshop (see the previous news item), where Dr. Fujiwara served as a co-organizer.
Peilin Yu (with Dr. Katerina Vrotsou among the co-authors) presented a paper titled "Interactive Transformations and Visual Assessment of Noisy Event Sequences: An Application in En-Route Air Traffic Control"; and Dr. Fujiwara presented a paper titled "Feature Learning for Nonlinear Dimensionality Reduction toward Maximal Extraction of Hidden Patterns".
Daniel Witschard (with Dr. Kostiantyn Kucher and Prof. Kerren among the co-authors) presented a short paper (the "Visualization Notes" track at PacificVis) titled "Optimizing Embedding-based Network Reconstruction"; and Dr. Angelos Chatzimparmpas (with Prof. Kerren among the co-authors) presented a short paper titled "MetaStackVis: Visually-Assisted Performance Evaluation of Metamodels".
Additionally, Dr. Tanja Blascheck (with Dr. Lonni Besançon among the co-authors) presented a paper titled "Studies of Part-to-Whole Glanceable Visualizations on Smartwatch Faces".
Invited Speaker at the VisMeetsAI '23 Workshop
Prof. Andreas Kerren will give an invited talk entitled "Visualization Perspectives in Explainable and Trustworthy Machine Learning" at the PacificVis 2023 Visualization Meets AI Workshop (VisMeetsAI '23), Seoul, Korea, April 18, 2023.
Open PhD Position in Information Visualization and Visual Analytics
We have one open PhD position to be filled in the area of Information Visualization / Visual Analytics with a focus on web-based visualization of large and complex, multilayer networks (with applications to the power systems domain)! The position will be funded by the ELLIIT grant "Visual Analytics of Large and Complex Multilayer Technological Networks" (see below). More information about prerequisites, merits and the application procedure is provided here under the reference number LiU-2022-05261. Questions should be addressed via email to Prof. Andreas Kerren.
Deadline: February 6, 2023
New Project Granted by ELLIIT
Our proposal, Visual Analytics of Large and Complex Multilayer Technological Networks, has been granted funding from ELLIIT, the Excellence Center at Linköping–Lund in Information Technology within the recent Call D. Prof. Andreas Kerren (PI) and Dr. Richard Pates (co-PI) from Lund University will collaborate and supervise a new PhD student to be hired in 2023.
Multilayer networks are a relatively new way to model complex real-world systems that demand novel and efficient solutions for their analysis. This project will study and develop novel visual analytics approaches for the exploration and analysis of multilayer technological networks, which is not only highly relevant for the field of visual analytics, but also for the energy efficiency of power systems.
Licentiate Thesis Defense
On Wednesday, December 14, 2022, Jimmy Hammarbäck will defend his Licentiate thesis in Design (Room K4, Norrköping, 13:15). The thesis is entitled Modelling fighter pilot intent for future manned-unmanned teaming. Prof. Thomas Porathe (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Dep. of Design) will serve as the opponent.
Visit from LVF, the Swedish Air Navigation Services, general director
On October 1st, the LFV general director with her team visited Campus Norrköping. We presented our industry-relevant research outcomes, and our simulator labs. In particular, we highlighted the UTM projects and the Digital Assistant concept from the RESKILL project.
Drone demonstration week
On the 5-7th of October, prof. Jonas Lundberg and his team presented work in two projects on advanced air mobility. On the 5th, we demonstrated an autonomous flight with a dynamic geofence, at SAAB airport. We used our interactive visualization, UTM CITY as the interface to the system. The demonstration was a collaboration with several partners in the Autonomous Airport project. On the 6-7th we presented our interactive visualizer, UTM Explore as part of the CORUS XUAM autonomous flight demonstration between Norrköping and Linköping.
iVis Group at IEEE VIS 2022
Prof. Andreas Kerren, Dr. Jimmy Johansson Westberg, Dr. Lonni Besançon, and Dr. Takanori Fujiwara represented the iVis Group at IEEE VIS 2022 in Oklahoma City, USA during October 16–21, 2022 (hybrid event).
Angelos Chatzimparmpas (with Dr. Kucher and Prof. Kerren among the co-authors) presented an invited TVCG article titled "FeatureEnVi: Visual Analytics for Feature Engineering Using Stepwise Selection and Semi-Automatic Extraction Approaches"; Chaoqing Xu (with Dr. Fujiwara among the co-authors) presented an invited TVCG article titled "A Predictive Visual Analytics System for Studying Neurodegenerative Disease Based on DTI Fiber Tracts"; and Shaozhang Dai (with Dr. Besançon among the co-authors) presented a full paper titled "RoboHapalytics: A Robot Assisted Haptic Controller for Immersive Analytics".
Additionally, Dr. Kostiantyn Kucher has presented (remotely) a workshop paper titled "An Interdisciplinary Perspective on Evaluation and Experimental Design for Visual Text Analytics: Position Paper" at BELIV 2022, and Zeyang Huang (with Dr. Kucher and Prof. Kerren as co-authors) contributed a poster paper titled "Towards an Exploratory Visual Analytics System for Multivariate Subnetworks in Social Media Analysis"
Dr. Johansson Westberg organized (together with Prof. Jonas Lundberg and Dr. Karljohan Lundin Palmerius) the Interactive Visualization for Analysis and Control of Drone Traffic Meetup.
PhD Thesis Defense
On Tuesday, October 11, 2022, Elmira Zohrevandi will defend her PhD thesis in Visualization and Media Technology (Dome, Visualization Center C, Norrköping, 09:15). The thesis is entitled Real-Time Visual Analytics Interfaces to Strengthen Human-Automation Collaboration. Prof. Paul Rosenthal (University of Rostock, Germany) will serve as the opponent.
Special Issue on Visual Text Analytics
Prof. Andreas Kerren is co-editing a special issue on Visual Text Analytics of the Information Visualization Journal. Paper submission deadline is at April 30, 2023.
New Project Granted by Norrköping Fund
Our proposal, Immersive Analytics for Urban Heat: from Visual Exploration to Decision Support in Norrköping Municipality, has been granted funding from the Norrköping Fund on Monday, June 13, 2022. The research project is concerned with researching the use of immersive environments for the visualization and exploration of the appearance and effect of (extreme) weather events in urban areas with a focus on mapping and understanding the occurrence of urban heat in Norrköping municipality. Several partners will be involved in this work coming from several institutions: LiU (Katerina Vrotsou (PI), Andreas Kerren, Tina Neset, Lotten Wiréhn), SMHI (Jorge Humberto Amorim), Norrköping Municipality (Merja Willman, Josefine Petersson), and Linnaeus University (Aris Alissandrakis, Nico Reski).
Dagstuhl Seminar 22191 on Visual Text Analytics
Prof. Kerren and Dr. Kucher (as well as some of their collaborators) have participated in the Dagstuhl Seminar 22191 on Visual Text Analytics (with Prof. Kerren being one of the organizers). This Dagstuhl Seminar brought together researchers from the visualization, natural language processing (NLP), and machine learning communities, with domain experts from several text-related research areas, to identify the most pressing and promising open problems for collaborative research.
Open PostDoc Position in Information Visualization and Visual Analytics
We have one open PostDoc position to be filled in the area of Information Visualization / Visual Analytics with a focus on visual analytics for enhancing quality and trust in genome-wide expression clustering and annotation! More information about prerequisites, merits and the application procedure at LiU is provided here under the reference number LiU-2022-01774. Questions should be addressed via email to Prof. Andreas Kerren.
Deadline: May 20, 2022
WASP and DDLS Joint Call for Research Projects
We are very happy to announce that our proposal, Visual Analytics for Enhancing Quality and Trust in Genome-wide Expression Clustering and Annotation, has been granted funding in this call. The bridging research project will be funded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg foundation and will have both a rapid start-up phase and a high potential impact. It will explore novel ideas enabled by forming a multidisciplinary team spanning across the DDLS and WASP domains. Two postdocs, one from the WASP community and one from the life science community will work together on this joint project that will be lead by Prof. Andreas Kerren (LiU, WASP) and Prof. Mathias Uhlén (KTH, DDLS). For more information on the 15 accepted projects, we refer to the WASP News item.
IEEE VIS 2021 Sweden Satellite
Prof. Andreas Kerren serves as a local co-organizer for the IEEE VIS 2021 Sweden Satellite to be held in Norrköping, Sweden, from October 24-29, 2021:
If you are interested in joining us, then please register via the above given web page. The formal IEEE VIS conference registration is, however, handled separately by the main event.
Article in Computer & Graphics
A great collaboration with colleagues from Brazil and Canada led to a new article Fast and Reliable Incremental Dimensionality Reduction for Streaming Data published in the Computer & Graphics journal that is now available online. In order to help us to access and share our article, Elsevier provides free access to our article which is valid until October 27, 2021:
Workshop on Audio-Visual Analytics – Identifying Research Gaps for Integrating Sonification and Visualization
Don't miss the Audio-Visual Analytics workshop at the Audio Mostly conference Friday 3 September at 14:30 CEST, and discuss future research agendas combining visualization and sonification: Audio Mostly 2021.
You can find more information about the workshop here: Audio-Visual Analytics.
And, the Audio Mostly workshop will be continued at IEEE VIS in October: Workshop on Audio-Visual Analytics – Towards a Research Agenda for Integrating Sonification and Visualization.
Open PhD Position in Information Visualization and Visual Analytics
We have one open PhD position to be filled in the area of Information Visualization / Visual Analytics with a focus on web-based visualization of large and complex, multivariate networks and/or text data! More information about prerequisites, merits and the application procedure is provided here under the reference number LiU-2021-02831. Questions should be addressed via email to Prof. Andreas Kerren.
Deadline: August 20, 2021
New Website
The website of the iVis group has been instituted!