jeffrey michael heer

Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Science
University of California, Berkeley

360 Hearst Memorial Mining Building
Berkeley, CA 94720-1776

jheer (at) cs.berkeley.edu
jheer.org | vis.berkeley.edu

Upcoming Travel

Jan 31 Microsoft Research
Feb 4-5 Harvard
Feb 11-12 Stanford
Feb 20-24 Georgia Tech
Feb 25-26 MIT Media Lab
Feb 27-28 Brown University
Mar 6-7 PARC
Mar 11-13 Univ. of Washington
Mar 18-19 Univ. of Toronto
Mar 21-29 Alpine Skiing
Apr 5-10 CHI 2008
Apr 15 Nokia Research Palo Alto
Apr 17 Pixar

about me     projects     vita

selected projects

Collaborative Visualization

Social data analysis using interactive visualizations on the web.
Papers: CHI'07, VAST'07, CHI'06
Video: Flash (20M)

Multi-Scale Banking to 45°

Perceptual optimization of the aspect ratios of data graphics.
Papers: InfoVis'06

Animated Transitions in Data Graphics

Using animation to improve perception of transitions in data graphics.
Papers: InfoVis'07
Video: Quicktime (18M)

The Prefuse Visualization Toolkit

A toolkit for interactive visualization. Over 50,000 downloads!
Papers: InfoVis'06, CHI'05
Video: DivX AVI (30M), WMV (33M)

Vizster: Visualizing Social Networks

Visual exploration of networks such as Friendster, Facebook, and MySpace.
Papers: InfoVis'05, HICSS'06
Video: Numb3rs (CBS TV), WMV
See my complete list of projects >
bio

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science studying human- computer interaction, visualization, and social computing with my advisor Maneesh Agrawala. I'm affiliated with the Berkeley Institute of Design and the Visualization Lab. Over the years, I've worked at (Xerox) PARC, Microsoft Research, IBM Research, and Tableau Software.

I am also the author of the prefuse and flare toolkits for interactive visualization.

I have pursued a number of projects in human-computer interaction, with an emphasis on the topic of interactive visualization: developing computational tools to visually analyze and communicate information.

I adopt a holistic view of the visualization process, conducting research on novel visualization techniques for more effectively exploring data, visualization toolkits to improve and simplify visualization creation, and collaborative visualization systems that leverage the insights of multiple analysts.

The software tools I have developed as part of my research are now in regular use by thousands of developers, including the visualization research community and corporations such as IBM, Sun, PayPal, and Google.

I have also been actively involved in education, mentoring fellow students and teaching graduate and undergraduate courses on visualization and new media.