Yun Wang

About

I am a senior researcher in the Data, Knowledge, Intelligence (DKI) Area at Microsoft Research Asia (opens in new tab). My research lies in the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Information Visualization (VIS), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Data Science (DS). My work facilitates Human-Data Interaction, Human-AI Collaboration, and Data Storytelling through an interdisciplinary approach [G Scholar (opens in new tab)].

I obtained my Ph.D. from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology under the supervision of Prof. Huamin Qu and Prof. Qiong Luo. During my Ph.D. study, I visited Oxford University as a research scholar, hosted by Prof. Min Chen. Before that, I received my B.Eng. in Software Engineering from Fudan University and B.Sc. in Computer Science (Joint Degree) from University College Dublin.

More specifically, my research in the last 10 years focuses on enhancing humans’ communication with visualizations facilitated by AI advances.

• Visual Storytelling: easing the creation of visual storytelling with AI techniques to facilitate humans’ information comprehension and communication, including:
  • Infographics [InfoNice (opens in new tab), DataShot (opens in new tab), Text-to-viz (opens in new tab), TimelineReuse (opens in new tab), ChartReuse (opens in new tab)] and interactive web pages [Vispaper (opens in new tab)]
  • Motion graphics [InfoMotion (opens in new tab), Clickstream (opens in new tab), AniVis (opens in new tab), Foreshadowing (opens in new tab), Narration-Animation Interplay (opens in new tab)]
• Human-AI Collaboration:  simplifying the interaction workflows to improve humans and AIs’ combined creativity and productivity
  • Learn from humans’ knowledge, preferences and experiences through comparison (opens in new tab), assessment (opens in new tab), and visual programming (opens in new tab)
  • Facilitate humans’ analysis workflow [GridBook (opens in new tab), Multivision (opens in new tab)] — our taxonomy on AI4VIS (opens in new tab)
  • Enhance humans’ creativity workflow, including ideation and planning [Inkplanner (opens in new tab)], authoring [Galvis (opens in new tab), VisTalk (opens in new tab)], and storytelling [Story Synthesis (opens in new tab)]

For detailed information, please refer to the recent publications https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/wangyun/publications/ (opens in new tab) and Google Scholar (opens in new tab) ‪ (opens in new tab)page.

We are hiring intern students! Please send emails to wangyun@microsoft.com (opens in new tab) for potential collaborations.

– News –

Oct 2022   Our paper Galvis (opens in new tab) has won Best Paper honorable mention in CIKM 2022 (opens in new tab). Congrats to Leixian and co-authors.

Oct 2022   Our paper VisTalk (opens in new tab) and the AI4VIS survey (opens in new tab) was presented at IEEE VIS 2022.

Sep 2022    My Intern Haotian Li has been awarded 2022 Microsoft Research PhD Fellow (opens in new tab). Congrats!

Feb 2022   We have three papers accepted for presentation at ACM CHI 2022, EuroVis 2022, and IUI 2022.

Oct 2021   Our paper on reusing infographic charts (opens in new tab) was presented at IEEE VIS 2021.

Oct 2021    My Intern Aoyu Wu has been awarded 2021 Microsoft Research PhD Fellow (opens in new tab). Congrats!

July 2021   Invited Talk @ ChinaVis 2021: AI-Powered Design of Data Storytelling.

July 2021   Our paper, Multivision: Designing Analytical Dashboards with Deep Learning-Based Recommendation and A Mixed-Initiative Approach to Reusing Infographic Charts is accepted by VIS 2021.

July 2021   Check out our survey on AI4VIS (opens in new tab): Survey on Artificial Intelligence Approaches for Data Visualization, accepted by TVCG.

June 2021  Our technique InfoMotion (opens in new tab), generating animations automatically from static infographics, is presented at EuroVis 2021 (opens in new tab).

May 2021   Our Technique LQ2 (opens in new tab) for automated suggesting of chart layout is presented at CHI 2021.

Nov 2020   Invited Talk @ ChinaVis 2020: (1) Recent Advances of AI for VIS. (2) AI-Powered Design of Visualizations and Infographics.

Oct 2020    We have 2 papers presented at IEEE VIS conference. (1) Chartem: Reviving Chart Images with Data Embedding and (2) Improving Engagement of Animated Visualization with Visual Foreshadowing.

Aug 2020   Invited Talks @ CAD&CG 2020: How to Conduct Research on Data Storytelling

Oct 2019     This year we have 6 papers (opens in new tab) presented at IEEE VIS conference. I presented three of them!

Jul 2019      Invited Talk @ ChinaVis 2019: Authoring and Assessing Visualizations for Data Storytelling.

Aug 2019    IEEE CG&A has published our viewpoints (opens in new tab)“An Emotional Response to the Value of Visualization”!

Aug 2019    Our research was featured the cover story (opens in new tab) of IEEE CG&A. Thanks Gary Singh for the interview!

– Media –

[MSRA News] Democratize Data Visualization | Automatic Generation of Visualization and Charts (Chinese Article (opens in new tab))

[CG&A (opens in new tab) – Cover Story] Hungry for data (opens in new tab) (Interviewed by Gary Singh (opens in new tab))

[MSRA News] CHI 2018 Conference Sharing [1] (opens in new tab) [2] (opens in new tab) (Chinese)

[HKUST CSE Department – Research Updates] Data Edibilization (opens in new tab) (Chinese)

[HKUST CSE Department – News] Google Anita Borg Scholarship (opens in new tab)