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: Making Data Visualizations Talk: Accessible Text Descriptions for UpSet Plots 7 Jun 2025
Data visualizations in scientific journals are essential for understanding the content of an article. However, visualizations typically are inaccessible for blind or low-vision users. A common remedy are text descriptions for the visualizations. Yet, text descriptions are difficult to generate for advanced plots, such as UpSet Plots. Here, we introduce methods to generate short and long text descriptions for UpSet Plots.

A screenshot of an UpSet plot and the accompanying text description on the website https://upset.multinet.app. The plot shows data about covid symptoms. User interface elements for interacting with the plot are visible on the left. The text description is shown on the right.
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News: Max Lisnic Successfully Defends Dissertation 15 May 2025
Congratulations to Max for completing his PhD!

Group photo with Max celebrating his PhD Defense!

Max Lisnic successfully defended his dissertation on “Designing Resilient Visualizations Toward More Accurate Data Discourse”. Max was co-advised by Marina Kogan and Alex Lex. The committee was completed by Kate Isaacs, Vineet Pandey, and Crystal Lee.

Max will join WPI as an assistant professor this fall!

Congrats, and good luck with your next steps!

Max Speaking Max and the Group Max' Cake

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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.
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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.
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Recent Publications