Event Schedule
Data Visualisation Hub Launch
25th April 2018,
LT6, The Arts Tower, 12 Bolsover Street, Sheffield, S3 7NA
Introduction
Welcome
Jez Cope, University of Sheffield, Library
Introduction to the initiative
Anne Horn, University of Sheffield, Director of Library Services & University Librarian
Main Talks
1. Data visualisation in academic research
Helen Kennedy, University of Sheffield, Sociological Studies
In this talk, Helen Kennedy will draw on a range of visualization research projects (such as Seeing Data (http://seeingdata.org/) and INDVIL (https://indvil.org/)) to reflect on the possibilities that dataviz opens up, the pragmatic challenges of realising dataviz's potential, the conventions that constrain what can be done with dataviz, and the contexts within which all of this takes place.
2. The Interactive Data Network at the University of Oxford
Martin John Hadley, University of Oxford, IT Services
OxShef Dataviz & Reproducible Dataviz workflows @ University of Oxford
3. dataviz.shef: Our plans & hopes for the Hub.
Anna Krystalli, University of Sheffield, Research Software Engineering
An overview of the establshment of dataviz.shef, the work we've done, the resources available through the inititative and our hopes for the future of the Data Visualisation Hub.
Lightning Talks
1. Teaching data viz to first years
Mark Taylor, University of Sheffield, SMI
I've been teaching data viz to first year social scientists in the first semester for a few years now. I'll run through what the syllabus looks like, but spend most of the time showing you students' work.
2. Mapping Sheffield's neighbourhoods
Paul Brindley, University of Sheffield, Landscape
Neighbourhoods are a vague concept and subjective. As such, their boundaries are difficult to define and map. Data can be complex and overlap. I have developed probabilistic mapping techniques mining and extracting data from the Internet. Issues with presentation of the output, however, remain when attempting to display all neighbourhood boundaries for a city in a single visualisation.
3. Visualizations for early stage drug discovery
Antonio de la Vega de Leon, University of Sheffield, Information School
Visualizations of chemical data for the purpose of drug discovery are challenging. The focus of many of these visualizations is understanding how the chemical structure of a molecule affects its physico-chemical properties. Therefore, two distinct spaces need to be shown in an integrated manner: a chemical space based on a molecules structure; and a property space based on properties that need to be optimized. In this talk, I will make an overview of how visualizations have evolved in this field, as well as the main challenges that are still present and some current work in solving them.
4. Visualising bird bill shape evolution in 3D
Chris Cooney, University of Sheffield, Animal and Plant Sciences
Accurate measurement of species' morphological traits is crucial for many branches of biology, and ever-increasing amounts of high-resolution data call for new approaches to visualising biological variation. Here I briefly describe some examples from my own work trying to understanding the evolution of bird bill shapes using 3D scans of museum specimens.
5. 3D Geographical Visualisations
Phil Jones, University of Sheffield, Law
Phil will present a 3D printed and CAD model of house prices in Great Britain developed as part of the UK Data Service's Open Data Dive hackathon.
6. Image vs x-ray vs cubix cube: different modes of visualisation
Dan Olner, University of Sheffield, Sheffield Methods Institute
Infographics are designed to be as legible as possible for people with no knowledge of the subject. X-rays are kind of the opposite: it can take years of training to "see" everything they show. Both are important but we don't often pay attention to the difference when planning visualisations. And are some visualisations more like rubix cubes? They demand active involvement and manipulation - this participation is essential to their job. What kind of tools and approaches are suitable for all these different types of viz?
7. Sheffield Data for Good
Tom French, Good Things Foundation (non-academic), Design and Exporations
A brief overview of how we're bringing together the data and social expertise in Sheffield to tackle the city's social challenge, and how you can help.
8. Blast load visualisation
Sam Clarke, University of Sheffield, Civil
Taking point data sources and using them to develop a full characterisation of the output from a buried explosive charge.
Speaker Bios
Helen Kennedy
Helen Kennedy is Professor of Digital Society at the University of Sheffield. Her research has traversed digital media landscapes, covering topics from web homepages to data visualisation, from race, class, gender inequality to learning disability and web accessibility, and from web design to social media data mining. She recently led Seeing Data (www.seeingdata.org), which explored how non-experts relate to data visualisations (funded by the AHRC). Other recent research explored what happens when social media data mining becomes widespread – this research was funded by an AHRC Fellowship and published as a monograph entitled Post, Mine, Repeat: social media data mining becomes ordinary (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).
She is currently researching what people think about how media organisations use their data, as part of an AHRC-funded network Data, Diversity and Inequality in the Creative Industries. She is also a member of the INDVIL (Innovative Data Visualization and Visual-Numeric Literacy, http://indvil.org/, funded by the Norwegian Research Council) project team and is editing a book with INDVIL Director Martin Engebretsen called Data Visualization in Society.
She is interested in critical approaches to digital life, especially big data and data visualisation. This includes thinking about how to make data more accessible to non-expert citizens, how people live with what has been called ‘datafication’, how data analytics processes discriminate, and how data mining could enable, rather than inhibit, well-being.
Martin John Hadley
I'm the technical lead for the Interactive Data Network at University of Oxford - a service promoting and supporting the use of interactive data visualisations to communicate research data, read more at http://idn.it.ox.ac.uk
Anna Krystalli
A Research Software Engineer at the University with a background in marine macroecology. During my PhD I was drawn to coding and the data science elements of the work, including interactive data apps and visualisations. Now I help researchers do more with their code and data.
Mark Taylor
I'm a lecturer in quantitative methods
Paul Brindley
Paul is lecturer in Landscape Planning. He has over fifteen years’ experience using geographical information science (GIS), spatial analysis and quantitative statistics. He uses his expertise in computer programming and geocomputation in order to automate operations at scale.
Antonio de la Vega de Leon
I'm a chemoinformatician, mixing computer science and chemistry in my research. I currently work as a postdoctoral researcher in the University of Sheffield, as part of a Marie Curie project against Alzheimer's diesease (D3i4AD). A large part of my PhD had to do visualizing high dimensional chemical spaces.
Chris Cooney
A postdoctoral research associate in APS studying the evolution and diversification of birds
Phil Jones
Phil is a post-doc research associate working in the University of Sheffield's Centre for Criminological Research.
Dan Olner
Dan is a researcher in the Sheffield Methods Institute working on a diverse bunch of projects, from modelling whether houses can see wind turbines or green space to making 3D prints of Census data to making monsters using a Kinect motion sensor. He also occasionally runs day workshops on data wrangling and visualisation in R.
Tom French
An organiser of Sheffield Data for Good. And Data Design Manager at Good Things Foundation, a national charity focusing on tackling social challenges through a network of hyper-local, community-based organisations.
Sam Clarke
Senior Lecturer in Geotechnics with a penchant for Blast