On December 1, 2016, Dr. Fabian Beck is appointed as Junior Professor in Informatics at the University of Duisburg-Essen. His group will research and teach topics of information and software visualization.

Biography

Previously, Fabian Beck has been working as a postdoctoral research at the University of Stuttgart Visualization Research Center (VISUS) in the group of Daniel Weiskopf. In 2013, he received his doctoral degree with distinction at the University of Trier for his work within the software engineering group of Stephan Diehl, where he had also graduated in 2009 as Diplom-Informatiker. His research is currently funded by Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft and Baden-Württemberg Stiftung and was awarded with the Joseph A. Schumpeter publication award of the University of Trier.

Research Areas

The new group will contribute to data visualization research. Leveraging the human capacities for quick visual information processing, visualizations facilitate the efficient and effective analysis and communication of complex matter. In combination with algorithmic approaches, the human's and computer's abilities complement each other. Visualizations find application within an advancing digitalization in all areas of a connected economy, society, and science - for instance, visualizing social networks, software architectures, or business processes. The research group will focus on information visualization and visual analytics. Information visualization is the visual encoding of abstract data not having a natural spatial representation (networks, multivariate data, time series, etc.). Visual analytics integrates visualization approaches into extensive interactive analysis tools and combines them with algorithmic solutions. Software engineering will be one of the main application areas where the group tests its visualization techniques (software visualization). Figure: 3D print of an information visualization for representing a changing hierarchy and network structure (publication).

Teaching

Every summer semester, the group will offer a lecture and tutorials on Information and Software Visualization, which will complement Master courses in Software Systems Engineering. Seminars and project groups covering different topics of visualization will extend the teaching profile. Also, the group has available PhD positions, thesis topics, and jobs as student assistant.