2022 VGTC Visualization Significant New Researcher Award

Michelle Borkin is an Assistant Professor in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University. She is Co-Lead of the Visualization @ Khoury Lab, and Co-Director and Co-Founder of the Northeastern Visualization Consortium (NUVis). She is also a member of the IEEE VIS Organizing Committee, and is a co-organizer of the Workshop on Visualization for Social Good. Prior to joining Northeastern, she was a postdoctoral research fellow in computer science at the University of British Columbia with Prof. Tamara Munzner, an associate in computer science at Harvard University, and a research fellow at Brigham & Women’s Hospital. Borkin received her PhD in applied physics from Harvard University’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences in 2014, advised by Profs. Hanspeter Pfister and Alyssa Goodman. She was a National Science Foundation graduate research fellow, a National Defense Science and Engineering graduate fellow, and a TED fellow. Borkin works across disciplines to bring together computer scientists, doctors, and scientists to collaborate on new analysis and visualization techniques. Her research bridging fundamental theory to practical applications has resulted in the development of novel computer assisted diagnostics in medicine, scalable visualization solutions for tree and network data, toolkits to improve visualization interactivity and collaboration, and novel astrophysical visualization tools and discoveries including the glue visualization software. Her research interests across data visualization include evaluation methodologies, perception and cognition theory, multidimensional brushing-and-linking methodologies, tree and network visualization, accessibility, and visualization for social good. Borkin’s foundational work on visualization memorability has hundreds of citations, and her work on novel visualization design study methodology and online accessibility has been recognized with awards at the CHI Conference (Best Paper 2020, Honorable Mention 2021). Her future work remains focused on bridging fundamental visualization theory to practical applications across disciplines.