Jeffrey Michael Heer (born June 15, 1979) is an American

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (a ...

best known for his work on

information visualization Information is an abstract concept that refers to that which has the power to inform. At the most fundamental level information pertains to the interpretation of that which may be sensed. Any natural process that is not completely random, a ...

and interactive

data analysis Data analysis is a process of inspecting, cleansing, transforming, and modeling data with the goal of discovering useful information, informing conclusions, and supporting decision-making. Data analysis has multiple facets and approaches, enc ...

. He is a professor of computer science & engineering at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seatt ...

, where he directs the UW Interactive Data Lab. He co-founded

Trifacta Trifacta is a privately owned software company headquartered in San Francisco with offices in Bengaluru, Boston, Berlin and London. The company was founded in October 2012 and primarily develops data wrangling software for data exploration and se ...

with

Joe Hellerstein Joseph M. Hellerstein (born ) is an American professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley, where he works on database systems and computer networks. He co-founded Trifacta with Jeffrey Heer and Sean Kandel in 2012, wh ...

and

Sean Kandel Sean Kandel is Trifacta's Chief Technical Officer and Co-founder, along with Joseph M. Hellerstein and Jeffrey Heer. He is known for the development of new tools for data transformation and discovery and is the co-developed of Data Wrangler, an i ...

in 2012.

Education

Heer received a B.S.,

M.S. A Master of Science ( la, Magisterii Scientiae; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree in the field of science awarded by universities in many countries or a person holding such a degree. In contrast to ...

and

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * '' Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. al ...

from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant un ...

. As a graduate student at UC Berkeley, he developed the Prefuse and Flare visualization toolkits.

Research and career

Heer was an assistant professor of computer science at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

, from 2009 to 2013. He is also co-founder and chief experience officer of Trifacta. Heer's research focuses on new systems and techniques for

data visualization Data and information visualization (data viz or info viz) is an interdisciplinary field that deals with the graphic representation of data and information. It is a particularly efficient way of communicating when the data or information is nu ...

. As a member of the Stanford University faculty, he worked with

Mike Bostock Michael Bostock is an American computer scientist and data-visualisation specialist. He is one of the co-creators of ''Observable'' and noted as one of the key developers of D3.js, a JavaScript library used for producing dynamic, interactive, o ...

on the Protovis and

D3.js D3.js (also known as D3, short for Data-Driven Documents) is a JavaScript library for producing dynamic, interactive data visualizations in web browsers. It makes use of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), HTML5, and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) sta ...

systems. Heer then moved to the

where he worked with students and collaborators to develop the

Vega and Vega-Lite visualisation grammars Vega and Vega-Lite are visualization tools implementing a grammar of graphics, similar to ggplot2. The Vega and Vega-Lite grammars extend Leland Wilkinson's Grammar of Graphics. by adding a novel grammar of interactivity to assist in the explorat ...

. Along with

and

, Heer has also developed interactive tools for data transformation (including Data Wrangler), leading to the founding of Trifacta. Other research contributions include work on the graphical perception of visualizations, social data analysis, text visualization, and interactive language translation tools.

Awards and recognition

Heer's research has been recognized by an ACM

Grace Murray Hopper Award The Grace Murray Hopper Award (named for computer pioneer RADM Grace Hopper) has been awarded by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) since 1971. The award goes to a computer professional who makes a single, significant technical or ser ...

, a

Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation is an American foundation established by Intel co-founder Gordon E. Moore and his wife Betty I. Moore in September 2000 to support scientific discovery, environmental conservation, patient care improvements a ...

Data-Driven Discovery Investigator Award, an Alfred P.

Sloan Fellowship The Sloan Research Fellowships are awarded annually by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation since 1955 to "provide support and recognition to early-career scientists and scholars". This program is one of the oldest of its kind in the United States. ...

, and MIT

Technology Review ''MIT Technology Review'' is a bimonthly magazine wholly owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and editorially independent of the university. It was founded in 1899 as ''The Technology Review'', and was re-launched without "The" in ...

TR35 The Innovators Under 35 is a peer-reviewed annual award and listicle published by ''MIT Technology Review'' magazine, naming the world's top 35 innovators under the age of 35. at ''Technology Review'' with lists of winners at technologyreview.com ...

list. Heer and his students have won best paper awards at human-computer interaction and visualization conferences. His work has also appeared in the popular press.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Heer, Jeffrey 1979 births Living people University of California, Berkeley alumni Stanford University faculty University of Washington faculty American computer scientists Sloan Research Fellows D3.js people