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 ( ...

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, ...

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, en ...

. 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 Seat ...

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

and Sean Kandel in 2012.

Education

Heer received a B.S., M.S. 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. albu ...

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 u ...

. As a graduate student at UC Berkeley, he developed the

Prefuse Prefuse is a Java-based toolkit for building interactive information visualization applications. It supports a rich set of features for data modeling, visualization and interaction. It provides optimized data structures for tables, graphs, and tre ...

and Flare visualization toolkits.

Research and career

Heer was an assistant professor of computer science at Stanford University, 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 nume ...

. As a member of the Stanford University faculty, he worked with Mike Bostock on the Protovis and D3.js systems. Heer then moved to the

where he worked with students and collaborators to develop the Vega and Vega-Lite visualisation grammars. Along with

and Sean Kandel, 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 Data-Driven Discovery Investigator Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, and MIT Technology Review's TR35 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