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<p>The 2015 Visualization Technical Achievement Award goes to <strong>Tamara Munzner</strong> in recognition of foundational research that has produced a scientific basis for principles and design choices for visualization. </p><p>Tamara Munzner is a full professor at the University of British Columbia Department of Computer Science, where she has been since 2002.</p><p>Tamara has made seminal contributions to the development, evaluation, and characterization of visualization systems and techniques from both problem-driven and technique-driven perspectives. In problem-driven work, known as design studies, the focus is on designing systems to solve specific needs for a target group of real-world users. Tamara has worked on problem-driven visualization in a broad range of application domains, including genomics, evolutionary biology, fisheries management, environmental sustainability, large-scale system administration, web log analysis, networking, computational linguistics, data mining, and journalism. Her technique-driven interests include graph drawing and dimensionality reduction, with an emphasis on scalable algorithms. Her evaluation interests include both controlled experiments in a laboratory setting and qualitative studies in the field.</p><p>Tamara has a strong interest in the theoretical foundations of visualization, with a series of publications that describe and prescribe models and methods for visualization design and the research process itself, including a nested model of design and validation and methodology for design studies. Her 2014 book Visualization Analysis and Design provides a systematic, comprehensive framework for thinking about visualization in terms of principles and design choices. It features a unified approach encompassing information visualization techniques for the abstract data of tables and networks, scientific visualization techniques for spatial data, and visual analytics techniques for interweaving data transformation and analysis with interactive visual exploration. She is also the co-author of the NIH/NSF Visualization Research Challenges Report.</p><p>------------</p><p><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">The IEEE VGTC Visualization Technical Achievement Award was established in 2004. It is given every year to recognize an individual for a seminal technical achievement in visualization. VGTC members may nominate individuals for the Visualization Technical Achievement Award by contacting the awards chair, Larry Rosenblum, at vgtc-vis-awards@</span><a href="http://vgtc.org/" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(17, 85, 204); font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">vgtc.org</a><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">. For the past awardee, please visit </span><font face="arial, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">http://vgtc.org/content/visualization-technical-awards.</span></font></p><p> </p><p>Best regards,</p><p>- Jian (on behalf of VIS 2015 publicity chairs)</p><p><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">----------------------------------------------------------</span></p><div style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Jian Chen, PhD, Assistant Prof. </div><div style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;">CSEE, University of Maryland Baltimore County</div><div style="color: rgb(34, 34, 34); font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.csee.umbc.edu/~jichen" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(17, 85, 204);">http://www.csee.umbc.edu/~jichen</a></div><p> </p><div><span style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;"><br /></span></div><div> </div><p> </p><BR><hr />Message sent via Atmail Open - http://atmail.org/</HTML>