John Stasko

John is Director of the Information Interfaces Research Group whose mission is to help people take advantage of information to enrich their lives. As the amount of data available to people and organizations has skyrocketed over the past 10-20 years, largely fueled by the growth of the internet, insufficient methods for people to benefit from this flood of data have been developed. A central focus of many of the group's projects is the creation of information visualization and visual analytics tools to help people explore, analyze, and understand large data sets. In particular, they are creating visual analytics systems to help people with "sense-making" activities on data sets such as large document collections. The group also has developed a number of techniques and systems for providing people with peripheral awareness of useful information. Follow the link to the research group in order to visit pages with more details on these projects. John is a faculty investigator in the Dept. of Homeland Security's VACCINE Center of Excellence (GT page) focusing on developing visual analytics technologies and solutions for grand challenge problems in homeland security, and in the NSF FODAVA Center exploring the foundations of data analysis and visual analytics. He is also an affiliated faculty member in the Tennenbaum Institute at Georgia Tech. In the past ten years, the Internet and the WWW have helped to significantly expand the amount of data accessible to people. Whether someone is buying a new computer, figuring out how traffic will be on the ride home, or answering email, he or she may simply feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information present or may not be able to find the right information. Dr. Stasko's research group is uncovering ways to help people benefit from this flood of information. One central focus of a number of their projects is the creation of Information Visualization tools to help people understand large data sets. Another project focus is on evaluating anthropomorphic software agents/characters that are used as aids or filters in user interfaces.