Designing Visualizations for Biological Research, November 16

Data Exploration through Visualization at Michigan An interactive exploration of effective data visualization for scientists MIRIAH MEYER, PhD Designing Visualizations for Biological Research November 16, 2012 12:00-1:00 PM 1755 School of Public Health Building I Advances in measurement devices in the last decade have given rise to an explosion of scientific data, data which holds the promise of curing human disease, predicting the future health of our planet, and unlocking the secrets of the universe. In biology, access to massive amounts of quantitative data has fundamentally changed how discoveries are made, and now an important component of the scientific process is making sense of this data using visualization methods. For most biologists, however, their visualization toolbox is made up of only broadly-available tools that were designed for over-arching problems, often leaving them without answers to their specific research questions. A growing trend in the visualization community is to develop tools that focus on specific, real-world problems. Called a design study, the process of developing these tools relies on a close collaboration with end-users as well as the use of methods from design. In this talk I’ll present several design studies that target complex, biological data analysis, from discovering trends in molecular networks to understanding the results of comparative genomics algorithms. * Please RSVP for Miriah’s talk on the UMDEV CTools site. Send email to cweinhouse@gmail.com to be added to the site. Please RSVP separately for the talk and for the Community Forum. Data Visualization Community Forum With Miriah Meyer (Limit 25 participants) November 16, 2012 1:00-2:00 PM 2750 School of Public Health Building I Join a group of interested community members from across campus to discuss current data visualization challenges and interests in your own work. Participants may look forward to hearing innovative, cross-disciplinary solutions for their research projects, as well as fostering new collaborations across campus. Please come prepared to answer the question, “What data visualization challenges and interests do you have in your own work?” *To join for lunch in this small group setting following Miriah’s talk, please RSVP on the UMDEV CTools site. Send email to cweinhouse@gmail.com to be added to the site. Please RSVP separately for the talk and for the Community Forum. About DEV The DEV Seminar Series provides a platform for an interdisciplinary community of faculty, post-doctoral fellows, and graduate students to explore effective data visualization approaches for communicating with scientists from a range of fields and with non-scientists.The aim is to bring together experts and practitioners with researchers who are facing the challenge of conveying complex information to different audiences through visualization, with the intention of stimulating explorations and conversations that enable knowledge to be shared and built upon.