Danielle Szafir

My research bridges data visualization and perception to drive the design of novel systems for analyzing large and complex datasets. I focus on expanding our knowledge of perception in order to evaluate how visualization design impacts users’ abilities to accomplish their analytical goals. Through this process, I derive quantified insight into the role of perception in interpreting visualizations by gauging how real viewers in natural environments perceive encoded information. I use this knowledge to design systems and techniques that overcome scalability and interpretability limitations in existing designs. The resulting visualizations address research problems across a variety of domains, including genomics, proteomics, biochemistry, and the humanities.

▾ Research Interests

▾ Education

▾ Publications

Journal Publications

Danielle Albers Szafir, Alper Sarikaya, and Michael Gleicher. “Lightness Constancy in Surface Visualization.” Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 2014. (revised and resubmitted)

Alper Sarikaya, Danielle Albers, Julie Mitchell, and Michael Gleicher. “Visualizing Validation of Protein Surface Classifiers.” Computer Graphics Forum, 33(3), 2014. In Proceedings of Eurographics Conference on Visualization (EuroVis).

Danielle Albers, Colin Dewey, and Michael Gleicher. “Sequence Surveyor: Leveraging Overview for Scalable Genomic Alignment Visualization.” IEEE Transactions of Visualization and Computer Graphics, 17(5), 2011. In Proceedings of IEEE Information Visualization.

Michael Gleicher, Danielle Albers, Rick Walker, Ilir Jusufi, Charles Hansen, and Jonathan Roberts. “Visual Comparison for Information Visualization.” Information Visualization, 10(4), 2011.

Refereed Conference Publications

Danielle Albers Szafir, Maureen Stone, and Michael Gleicher. “Adapting Color Difference for Design.” IS&T 22nd Color and Imaging Conference, 2014. [Best Paper Award]

Maureen Stone, Danielle Albers Szafir, and Vidya Setlur. “An Engineering Model for Color Discriminability as a Function of Size.” IS&T 22nd Color and Imaging Conference, 2014.

Danielle Albers, Michael Correll, and Michael Gleicher. “Task-Driven Evaluation of Aggregation in Time Series Visualization.” CHI ’14: Proceedings of the 2014 Annual Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2014.

Michael Correll, Danielle Albers, Steve Franconeri, and Michael Gleicher. “Comparing Averages in Time Series Data.” CHI ’12: Proceedings of the 2012 Annual Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2012.

Refereed Abstracts

Danielle Albers, Michael Correll, Michael Gleicher, and Steve Franconeri. “Ensemble Processing of Color and Shape: Beyond Mean Judgments.” Journal of Vision, 2014.

Danielle Albers, Alper Sarikaya, and Michael Gleicher. “Lightness Constancy in Surface Visualization.” Poster Abstracts of IEEE VIS, 2013. [Best Poster Award]

Alper Sarikaya, Danielle Albers, and Michael Gleicher. “Understanding Performance of Protein Structural Classifiers.” Poster Abstracts of IEEE VIS, 2013.

Danielle Albers, Colin Dewey, and Michael Gleicher. “Sequence Surveyor: Leveraging Overview for Large-Scale Genomic Alignment Visualization.” 2011 VizBi: Visualizing Biological Data Poster Session, 2011.

Danielle Albers and Michael Gleicher. “Poster: Perceptual Principles for Scalable Sequence Alignment Visualization.” IEEE Information Visualization Poster Proceedings, 2010.

Danielle Albers and Michael Gleicher. “Perceptual Principles for Scalable Sequence Alignment Visualization.” Proceedings of the 7th Symposium on Applied Perception in Graphics and Visualization, 2010.

Invited Talks

Danielle Albers Szafir. "Informing Visualization in the Humanities through Perception and Genomics." Genres of Scholarly Knowledge Production, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden, 2014.

Danielle Albers Szafir. "Insights at a Glance: Visualization at UW-Madison." MERI at a Glance, McPherson Eye Research Institute, Madison, Wisconsin, 2014.

Workshops & Colloquia

Michael Correll, Eric Alexander, Danielle Albers Szafir, Alper Sarikaya, and Michael Gleicher. “Navigating Reductionism and Holism in Evaluation.” BELIV '14: Beyond Time and Errors-Novel Evaluation Methods for Visualization, 2014.

Danielle Albers Szafir. “Thinking with Data.” Digital Humanities Research Network Workshop, 2014.

Danielle Albers. “Perceptually Informed Scalable Sequence Comparison.” IEEE VIS Doctoral Colloquium, 2013.

Danielle Albers and Michael Gleicher. “Seeing Double: Crowdsourced Models of Color Discrimination.” Midgraph: Midwest Graphics Workshop, 2012.

Grants & Fellowships

Andrew W. Mellon Workshop Grant. "Digital Humanities Research Network." 2014.

BACTER Research Fellowship. Department of Energy’s Institute for Bringing Computational Techniques to Energy Research (BACTER) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2010-2012.

▾ Academic Experience

▾ Industry Experience

▾ Outreach

▾ Service

▾ Volunteering

▾ Professional & Academic Memberships

▾ Honors & Awards