About

We are a team of visualization researchers at the University of Utah. Our interests include the process of designing and developing visualizations, visualization for biology, visualization frameworks, and, more generally, visualization of big, heterogeneous, and complex datasets.

VDL is part of the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute and the School of Computing.

Blog And News

Blog Post: Reading Between the Lines: The US Computer Science Graduate Admission Process 9 Apr 2025
It’s the time of the year that prospective graduate students have to commit to a particular computer science graduate program. Those that got multiple offers are in the envious position to be able to choose between different programs, weighing potential advisors and schools. But the admission process can be opaque for students. Here, I’ll share some details in the form of an FAQ on what you can expect at each stage of the process.

A Letter of Recommendation.
More...
Blog Post: Reflections on UpSet 16 Oct 2024
This blog post was triggered by UpSet winning the 10-year Test of Time Award at IEEE VIS. In this post, I reflect on how UpSet came about, and what made it successful.

A screenshot of the UpSet system as originally published in 2014.
More...
Blog Post: Lessons Learned from Visualizing Multimodal Data... with Aardvarks... 30 Sep 2024
How do you analyze data with multiple modalities – say, images, trees and time-series? If you ask a visualization researcher, we will tell you visualizations are the solution, specifically composite visualizations! This blog shares some lessons we learned designing and developing composite visualizations to help understand cancer cell development. Regarding the aardvarks... this is clickbait, mostly. But we did get a best paper award for this project at IEEE VIS.

A cartoon anthropomorphized aardvark with boxing gear faces off against a gross cancer cell. The aardvark is determined to defeat the cancer cell. The cancer cell is afraid because it knows it is about to be whomped by the aardvark.
More...
News: Devin Lange Successfully Defends Dissertation 29 Jul 2024
Congratulations to Devin for wrapping up his PhD!

Group photo with Devin celebrating his PhD Defense!

Devin Lange successfully defended his dissertation on “Is that Right? Data Visualizations for Scientific Quality Control”. Devin was advised by Alex Lex, with Kate Isaacs, Paul Rosen, Hanspeter Pfister, and Nils Gehlenborg serving on the committee.

Devin will join Nils Gehlenborg’s Lab at Harvard Medical School as a PostDoc, while also spending some more time with us as a PostDoc. Congrats, and good luck with your next steps!

Devin and Alex Devin and the Group Devin Cutting two Cakes

More...
See All News

Recent Publications