Research and Bio

Who Am I

Benjamin is a Research Scientist at the French National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology (Inria) within the Bivwac Team, Bordeaux. He is also a part-time Associate Professor (Reader) at the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh where he founded the VisHub research group. Benjamin obtained his habilitation à dirigir des recherches (HDR) in 2024. He was named Significant New Researcher by the IEEE VIS conference (2021) and Eurographics Young Researcher (2019). His PhD received a VGTC Best Thesis honorable mention award (2014).

in discussion and dissemination. Visualization interfaces are complementary to purely analytical methods and predictive My research is in data visualization, human-computer interaction (HCI), data-driven storytelling, immersive analytics, and visualization education. My goal is to design novel and effective data visualization interfaces to support people in exploring and explaining data as well as to educate people in creating and using (interactive) data visualizations. As people require new ways to make sense out of the ever increasing availability and complexity of data and computational models, interactive visual representations of data are a necessary means to check data quality, observe patterns and outliers, and engage with models.

In my research, I design and study data visualization interfaces across a range of media and domains. I am working across fields with biologists, neuroscientists, public health advisers, clinicians, archaeologists, historians, social scientists, illustrators, and peace researchers. I observe problems in the use and creation of visualizations, then explore and prototype solutions, deploy prototypes among a stakeholder group, and study the impact and effectiveness of these new solutions. In many projects, I learn from real-world problems and domain experts. I aim to solve their specific problem through design and rapid prototyping. Then, I describe that problem as a general research problem in visualization or HCI (e.g., as a problem in visualizing relationships or spatio-temporal data) and generalize my solutions to other domains and data sets.

I draw from a range of methodologies including requirement analysis, focus groups, workshops, co-design sessions, user interface design, rapid and agile prototyping, system building, quantitative lab studies, qualitative data collection, and longitudinal studies. I create interactive visualizations on screens, in mixed and virtual reality, physical data models, as well as hybrids of these technologies.

The large majority of my publications have been published at the top-tier venues for human-computer interaction (ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), h5-index=101) and visualization (IEEE VIS and IEEE TVCG, h5-index=82) (acceptance rates around 21-23%).

Research areas

• Network Visualization
• Dashboards (learning analytics, health, public, energy, … )
• Visualization of spatio and temporal data
• Data-driven storytelling
• Visualization in Augmented and Virtual Reality (Immersive Analytics)
• Visualization Literacy and Education in visualization
• Peace and conflict analysis
• Engagement with Visaulization

Short Bio

Before joining Inria in 2023, Benjamin was an

• Associate Professor at the University of Edinburgh,
• postdoc at Harvard University (Visual Computing Group),
• postdoc at Monash University (Immersive Analytics Lab),
• visiting scholar at Microsoft-Research, and a
• visiting scholar at the Brain Imaging Center at the University of Washington.

Benjamin is an active member of the programme and organization committees of the primar venues for visualization (IEEE VIS) and human-computer interaction (ACM CHI). He is a co-founder of the Edinburgh Data Vis meetup with more than 1500 participants.

For detailed info, please see my full CV.

Theses

• HDR (habilitation à dirigir de recherche), Dec 2024: Understanding Data, One Visualization at a Time: Forms, Tools, and Skills for Big-Data Visual Exploration and Communication, Université de Bordeaux, France
• PhD Thesis, May 2014: Connections, changes, and cubes : unfolding dynamic networks for visual exploration, Université Paris-Sud, France
• MSc (Diploma), Dec 2010: Facettice: Integrating Faceted Navigation and Conceptn Lattices for Visual Data Exploration, Technische Universität Dresden, Germany

Awards

• 2022 Best Paper Honorable Mention, IEEE VIS (Dashboard Design Patterns)
• 2022 Best Paper Honorable Mention, IEEE VIS (Exploring Interactions with Printed Data Visualizations in Augmented Reality)
• 2021 New Significant Researcher Award, IEEE VIS
• 2021 ACM CHI Best Paper Honorable Mention: Sketchnote Components, Design Space Dimensions, and Strategies for Effective Visual Note Taking.
• 2019 Eurographics Young Researcher Award, IEEE/EG Eurographics
• 2018 BioVis Best Poster Award: Feature Centric Visual Exploration of Genomic Interaction Matrices
• 2014 VGTC Best Ph.D. Thesis Honorable Mention, IEEE VIS
• 2013 IEEE VIS Best Poster Award: Visualizing Dense Dynamic Networks with Matrix Cubes
• 2013 ACH CHI Best Paper Award: Weighted graph comparison techniques for brain connectivity analysis

Current PhD Students

1. Sarah Schöttler (since 2021, 1st supervisor)
2. Magdalena Boucher (since 2022, 2nd supervisor)
3. Rea Michalopoulou (since 2022, 2nd supervisor)
4. Sarah Dunn (since 2023, 1st supervisor
5. Jinrui Wang (since 2023, 2nd supervisor)
6. Valentin Edelsbrunner (since 2024, 1st supervisor)