Killam Lectures examine visualizing information

Police detectives, scientists, car buyers, students. In the emerging Information Age, these groups are just some of those who’ll be faced with seemingly endless amount of data that they’ll be required to interpret for decisions. One of the most important challenges they all face is how to best use information that is acquired, computed and stored by modern information systems.

While the wealth of data provides opportunity and potential for progress, it also comes with the risk of losing the users in irrelevant and inappropriate information – known as information overload.

The subject of the 2011 Dorothy J. Killam Memorial Lecture Series will look into the research that is working to turn the use of this data, or information overload, into opportunity through the emerging research discipline of visual analytics. Presented by the Faculty of Computer Science, this year’s lecture series, entitled Visualizing Information: Finding knowledge in massive data, features experts Daniel A. Keim and John Stasko.

Visual Problem Solving: How humans and computers cooperate best
Daniel A. Keim
Date:  Friday October 28, 7:00pm
Place:  Scotiabank Auditorium, McCain Building

Visual Analytics for Investigative Analysis and Exploration of Documents and Data
John Stasko
Date:  Monday November 14, 7:00pm
Place:  Ondaatje Hall, McCain Building

Dr. Keim, professor and head of the Information Visualization and Data Analysis Research Group at the University of Konstanz, Germany, will present Visual Problem Solving: How humans and computers cooperate best, on Friday, Oct. 28 in the Scotiabank Auditorium in the McCain building. His talk will present visual approaches to problem solving and discuss the challenges of this approach with examples from a diverse set of applications ranging from web content analysis over internet security to financial analysis.

Having been involved in information visualization and data analysis research for roughly 20 years, Dr. Keim’s research has resulted in two recent books "Solving problems with Visual Analytics" and "Interactive Data Visualization" which he both co-authored.

Following Dr. Keim, John Stasko, professor and associate chair of the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology will discuss Visual Analytics for Investigative Analysis and Exploration of Documents and Data on Monday, Nov 14 in the McCain building’s Ondaatje Hall.  Among other topics, Dr. Stasko will introduce the Jigsaw visual analytics system that helps investigators explore and understand collections of unstructured and semi-structured text documents.  In essence, Jigsaw helps investigators "put the pieces together" and gain a deeper understanding of the contents of the documents.

The director of the Information Interfaces Research Group Dr. Stasko is an internationally recognized researcher in the area of human-computer interaction, with a specific focus on information visualization and visual analytics.  His research group develops ways to help people and organizations explore, analyze, understand, and make sense of data in order to solve problems.

Dalhousie University's Dorothy J. Killam Memorial Lecture Series is a popular annual event, bringing together the university community, the general public and renowned scholars and thinkers from around the world. All are welcome to attend.

The Killam Lecture Series presents important and topical issues with an aim to stimulate public support for pre-doctoral and post-doctoral research. The lectures are also a means to encourage other wealthy Canadians to follow the example of Izaak Walton Killam and Dorothy Johnston Killam in endowing research with private resources.

For more information, visit the Killam website or contact David Langstroth at 494-8087