About the Speaker:
Dr. Stuerzlinger is a leading researcher in spatial and three-dimensional user interfaces, virtual reality, and human-computer interaction with additional strengths in visual analytics. He has been programming computers since the age of 14. At the request of his father he began developing software for tax consultants soon after. By 1989 this family-run company was the market leader in his native Austria, a position it still retains. Dr. Stuerzlinger graduated with a Doctorate in Computer Science from the Technical University in Vienna, Austria in 1993. Supported by an Erwin-Schrödinger fellowship he visited the Department of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill in 1997 (hosted by Prof. F. Brooks). While in Austria and at UNC, Dr. Stuerzlinger’s research interests focused on various areas of computer graphics, distributed, and high-performance systems. Between 1998 and 2014, Dr. Stuerzlinger worked at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at York University in Toronto, Canada. He is still an adjunct member of York’s interdisciplinary Centre for Vision Research (CVR).
Since 2014, he is a full professor at the School of Interactive Arts + Technology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. His works aims to find innovative solutions for real-world problems and is often inter-disciplinary. Current research projects include better interaction techniques for spatial applications, new human-in-the-loop systems for big data analysis (visual analytics), the characterization of technology limitations on human performance, an investigation of human behaviors when interacting with unreliable technologies, user interfaces for versions and alternatives, and new virtual reality hardware and software.
Dr. Stuerzlinger is a member of two steering committees for scientific events (one of which he co-founded), has been program chair for seven scientific events, and has participated in more than 65 international program committees. He is a co-author of more than hundred patents, published more than 100 fully refereed scientific papers, and has participated in multiple start-ups. Dr. Stuerzlinger has supervised more than 40 graduate students to completion, many of which now work in leading positions around the world.
More information can be found at: http://ws.iat.sfu.ca
About the Talk:
Our technologies generate more and more information and we have become inundated with such big data. While parts of this data can be dealt with automatically, other parts require human sense making. To assist people in dealing with big data, visual analytics systems have been created, where visual analytics is "the science of analytical reasoning facilitated by interactive visual interfaces.” In this talk I present an introduction to VA, give an overview of Visual Analytics research at SFU and discuss avenues of future work.