andke01

Andreas Kerren

Professor, Head of Unit

Professor of Information Visualization and Chair of the Information Visualization Group (iVis)
MIT Director of Research

Research in Visualization and Visual Analytics

My research mainly focuses on the explorative analysis and visualization of typically large and complex information spaces, for example in biochemistry, humanities, or software engineering. My vision is to attack the big data challenge by a combination of human-centered data analysis and interactive visualization for decision making. These research topics are highly relevant for academia and economy as both science and industry make increasing use of data-intensive technologies.

Human-Centered Visualization

This area deals with the development of interactive visualization techniques in consideration of user- and task-related information to explore and analyze complex data sets efficiently. Sensor data measured during the usage of a visualization (e.g., from brain-computer interfaces, eye trackers, etc.) may also be involved. This approach combines aspects of different research areas, such as information and scientific visualization, human-computer interaction, information design, cognition, but also the particular application field. From all subfields of visualization, I mainly focus on information visualization which centers on the visualization of abstract data, e.g., hierarchical, networked, or symbolic information sources. While the development of human-centered information visualizations, user abilities and requirements, visualization tasks, tool functions, interactive features, and suitable visual representations are equally taken into account.

Visual Analytics

In contrast to visualization, data mining or machine learning are traditionally more computer-centered. But to address the big data challenge, we have to use the advantages of both approaches synergistically, which is the main feature of visual analytics. Then, the analyst can focus his/her perceptual and cognitive capabilities on the analytical processes while using advanced computational methods to support and enhance the discovery process. The design and implementation of visual analytics tools is one of the most promising approaches to cope with the ever increasing amount of data produced every day and allows new insights and beneficial discoveries.

Positions and Affiliations

For more information, please visit my Personal Website.

Publications

2025

Daniel Witschard, Kostiantyn Kucher, Ilir Jusufi, Andreas Kerren (2025) Using Similarity Network Analysis to Improve Text Similarity Calculations Applied Network Science, Vol. 10, Article 8 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Daniel Witschard, Ilir Jusufi, Kostiantyn Kucher, Andreas Kerren (2025) Exploring Similarity Patterns in a Large Scientific Corpus PLOS ONE (Article in journal)
Daniel Witschard, Ilir Jusufi, Kostiantyn Kucher, Andreas Kerren (2025) Visually Guided Extraction of Prevalent Topics Information Visualization, Vol. 24, p. 179-198 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Takanori Fujiwara, Kostiantyn Kucher, Junpeng Wang, Rafael M. Martins, Andreas Kerren, Anders Ynnerman (2025) Adversarial Attacks on Machine Learning-Aided Visualizations Journal of Visualization, Vol. 28, p. 133-151 (Article in journal) Continue to DOI

2024

Jen Rogers, Marie Anastacio, Jürgen Bernard, Mehdi Chakhchoukh, Rebecca Faust, Andreas Kerren, Steffen Koch, Lars Kotthoff, Cagatay Turkay, Emily Wall (2024) Visualization and Automation in Data Science: Exploring the Paradox of Humans-in-the-Loop Proceedings of the 10th IEEE Symposium on Visualization in Data Science (VDS '24) at IEEE VIS '24, short paper track, p. 1-5 (Conference paper) Continue to DOI

Education

  • PhD in Computer Science, Saarland University, Germany, 2002
  • MSc in Computer Science (Dipl.-Inf.), Saarland University, Germany, 1997