Research interests

My research focuses on visual ways to interact with data, statistics, and mathematical models. As processors and algorithms advance, ever more complex models become computable in real time (~100 ms or less). When that occurs, the interaction cycle of (1) updating parameters, (2) running the model or query, and (3) examining the results can be compressed into a real-time interactive loop that enables users to quickly engage with complex multivariate spaces.

This advancement opens new possibilities for interactive visualization — and new creative potential for end users who can now quickly and easily explore thousands of parameter variations. This research has applications in data analysis, planning, finance, engineering, and education (among others) and is a contributor to the emerging field of Explorable Explanations.

Projects

• Spendlab.org: Software for planning lab budgets across multiple grants. (2017- )
• Math Easel: Interactive, web-based calculators and simulations. (2012- )
• Vizable: Dramatically easier data analysis for touch screens. (2013-2016)
• TeraFractal: A visual interface for creating lifelike fractals. (2005-2012)
• Graph Sketcher: Fast, simple graph drawing and data plotting. (2003-2011)
• Pidgin Parser: Extendable, semantics-driven parsing of "notes to self". (2007)

Patents

22 patents granted, including:

• Robin Stewart. Interactive Data Visualization User Interface with Gesture-based Data Field Selection. (filed 2016, granted 2020 as US patent 10,635,262)
• Robin Stewart. Interactive Data Visualization User Interface with Hierarchical Filtering Based on Gesture Location. (filed 2016, granted 2019 as US patent 10,347,018)
• Robin Stewart. Animated Transition between Data Visualization Versions at Different Levels of Detail. (filed 2016, granted 2019 as US patent 10,347,027)
• Robin Stewart. Interactive Data Visualization User Interface with Multiple Interaction Profiles. (filed 2015, granted 2019 as US patent 10,380,770)
• Robin Stewart. Methods and Devices for Manipulating Graphical Views of Data (filed 2015)
• Robin Stewart. Methods and Devices for Adjusting Chart Filters (filed 2015, granted 2020 as US patent 10,706,597)
• Robin Stewart. Methods and Devices for Adjusting Chart Magnification (filed 2015, granted 2018 as US patent 9,857,952)
• Robin Stewart. Methods and Devices for Adjusting Chart Magnification Asymmetrically (filed 2015, granted 2019 as US patent 10,521,092)
• Robin Stewart. Methods and Devices for Displaying Data Mark Information (filed 2015, granted 2021 as US patent 11,017,569)
• Ross Bunker, Justin Talbot, and Robin Stewart. Systems and Methods for using Multiple Aggregation Levels in a Single Data Visualization (filed 2015, granted 2022 as US patent 11,294,924)
• Jun Kim, Christopher Stolte, Jock Mackinlay, Robin Stewart, Bora Beran, Justin Talbot, and Clark Wildenradt. Data visualization user interface for simplified custom calculations (filed 2015, granted 2020 as US patent 10,698,589)
• Jun Kim, Christopher Stolte, Jock Mackinlay, Robin Stewart, Bora Beran, Justin Talbot, and Clark Wildenradt. Graphical User Interface that Simplifies User Creation of Custom Calculations for Data Visualizations (filed 2014, granted 2018 as US patent 10,042,533)
• Jun Kim, Christopher Stolte, Jock Mackinlay, Robin Stewart, Bora Beran, Justin Talbot, and Marc Rueter. Systems and Methods for Providing Adaptive Analytics in a Dynamic Data Visualization Interface (filed 2014, granted 2018 as US patent 10,163,234)
• Jun Kim, Christopher Stolte, Jock Mackinlay, Robin Stewart, Bora Beran, Justin Talbot, and Marc Rueter. Systems and Methods for Providing Drag and Drop Analytics in a Dynamic Data Visualization Interface (filed 2014, granted 2019 as US patent 10,332,284)
• Jun Kim, Christopher Stolte, Jock Mackinlay, Robin Stewart, Bora Beran, Justin Talbot, and Marc Rueter. Systems and Methods for Using Analytic Objects in a Dynamic Data Visualization Interface (filed 2014, granted 2018 as US patent 10,156,975)
• Jun Kim, Christopher Stolte, Jock Mackinlay, Robin Stewart, Bora Beran, Justin Talbot, and Marc Rueter. Systems and Methods for Using Displayed Data Marks in a Dynamic Data Visualization Interface (filed 2014, granted 2020 as US patent 10,895,975)

Publications

• *Best of CHI (top 1% of submissions): Robin Stewart and m.c. schraefel. 2009. Graph Sketcher: Extending Illustration to Quantitative Graphs. Proceedings of the 27th ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'09), Boston, MA.
• Robin Stewart, Gregory Scott, and Vladimir Zelevinsky. 2008. Idea Navigation: Structured Browsing for Unstructured Text. Proceedings of the 26th ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'08), Florence, Italy.
• Robin Stewart, Andrea Danyluk, and Yang Liu. 2006. Off-Topic Detection in Conversational Telephone Speech. Proceedings of the Analyzing Conversations in Text and Speech (ACTS) Workshop at HLT-NAACL, New York City, NY.
• J. Hale, I. Shafran, L. Yung, B. Dorr, M. Harper, A. Krasnyanskaya, M. Lease, Y. Liu, B. Roark, M. Snover and R. Stewart. 2006. “PCFGs with Syntactic and Prosodic Indicators of Speech Repairs.” Proceedings of COLING and Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (COLING-ACL), Sydney, Australia.
• B. Roark, Y. Liu, M. Harper, R. Stewart, M. Lease, M. Snover, I. Shafran, B. Dorr, J. Hale, A. Krasnyanskaya and L. Yung. 2006. “Reranking for Sentence Boundary Detection in Conversational Speech.” Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), Toulouse, France.
• B. Roark, M. Harper, E. Charniak, B. Dorr, M. Johnson, J. Kahn, Y. Liu, M. Ostendorf, J. Hale, A. Krasnyanskaya, M. Lease, I. Shafran, M. Snover, R. Stewart, L. Yung. 2006. “Sparseval: Evaluation Metrics for Parsing Speech.” Proceedings of the Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC), Genoa, Italy.

Talks

• Data Worlds: The Model Behind our New App, Vizable (October 2015, Tableau Conference 2015, Las Vegas, NV)
• Data Worlds: The Model Behind Project Elastic (August 2015, Tableau Research Seminar, Seattle, WA)
• Understanding Table Calculations (September 2014, Tableau Conference 2014, Seattle, WA)
• Direct Manipulation 2.0: Why scientific software should also be fun for 3-year-olds (April 2011, Williams College Computer Science Colloquium)
• OmniGraphSketcher and Direct Manipulation 2.0 (July 2009, dub, Seattle, WA)
• Graph Sketcher: Extending Illustration to Quantitative Graphs (April 2009, CHI'09, Boston, MA)
• Idea Navigation: Structured browsing for unstructured text (April 2008, CHI'08, Florence, Italy)
• Idea Navigation: Structured browsing for unstructured text (October 2007, HCIR'07, Cambridge, MA)
• Extendable, Semantics-Driven Parsing of Pidgin Language (May 2007, MIT)
• Off-Topic Detection in Conversational Telephone Speech (June 2006, ACTS Workshop at NAACL'06, New York City)
• Thesis Defense (May 2006, Williams College)
• A Small Talk (March 2006, Williams College)
• Thesis Research Proposal (August 2005, Johns Hopkins)

Theses

• Robin Stewart. May 2008. Interfaces for Creating Quantitative Conceptual Diagrams. Masters Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
• Robin Stewart. May 2006. Automatic Identification of Off-Topic Regions of Conversation. Senior Thesis, Williams College.

Workshops

• Co-Chair, HCIR 2007: Workshop on Human-Computer Interaction and Information Retrieval
• Participant, Johns Hopkins Center for Language and Speech Processing Summer Workshop 2005: Parsing and Spoken Structural Event Detection
• Participant, University of Pennsylvania Institute for Research in Cognitive Science Summer Workshop 2005

Résumé

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