Uzma Haque Syeda

Boston · Massachusetts · (857) 329-8802 · syeda.u@northeastern.edu

I am a fifth year PhD student at Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University. My primary reseach interest lies at the intersection of Data Visualization and HCI, particularly with a focus on theory and methods of design studies, replication studies, and visualization for social good. My work also includes visualization evaluations, focusing on user studies and participatory design. My work aims to bridge the gap between Visualization pedagogy and research by providing methodologies and frameworks to bring reserch education within data visualization classrooms. I work at the VIS Lab at Khoury College as a Graduate Research Assistant under the supervision of my PhD advisor Prof. Michelle A. Borkin. I have 4 years of experience in the data science field and am very passionate about inclusivity in STEM. I am originally from Bangladesh where I completed my undergraduate in Electrical and Electronic Engineering before coming to the Unites States. I love to cook, draw and read. Additional information about my research.

Education

Northeastern University

PhD in Computer Science
September 2018 - Present

Northeastern University

M.S. in Computer Science
September 2018 - 2021

University of Dhaka

B.Sc. in Electrical and Electronic Engineering
January 2013 - May 2017

Professional Experience

Research Experience

  • Graduate Research Assistant in the VIS Lab at Khoury College of Computer Sciences, Northeastern University.
    • Advisor: Professor Michelle A. Borkin

    Research focus: Theory and methods of design studies in Data Visualization with an aim to broaden the understanding and practical implementation of design studies for novice students. Besides benefitting the visualization community, the broader impact goal of this research focus is to introduce and encourage the idea of visualization for social good. Enabling novice students to perform design studies in their undergraduate/graduate level visualization courses empowers them to help the community they live in by collaborating and working with community partners and meeting their data and visualization needs through design studies.

  • Undergraduate Research on a project titled “Visual behavior analysis between neuro-typical children and children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.”
    • Advisor: Dr. Md Atiqur Rahman Ahad

    Project Description: The main objective of this project was to analyze the visual behavior differences between TD (typically developing) children and children with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder). The study used 12 children with ASD and 12 control children to investigate their visual behavior in smooth pursuit, saccadic eye movement and face processing mechanisms. The smooth pursuit experiment contained animations of objects moving horizontally across the screen and the saccadic test contained animations of predicable and non-predictable saccades. The third test contained images of seven different emotions. To attain the gaze data, Tobii EyeX Controller was used, and the data was obtained, processed and analyzed in MATLAB.

  • Academic Technology Scholar (Summer 2022)

    • Responsibilities: The AT scholars are a critical component of expanding the university's adoption and use of academic technology in the delivery of courses, whether in-classroom, online, or hybrid. As an AT Scholar, I worked in Academic Technologies alongside a team of AT Scholars, graduate student staff, and Instructional Technologists to help support faculty with integrating and using technology to support teaching and learning. AT Scholars work included supporting virtually drop-in hours, consulting with faculty, collaborating with CATLR, and working on a semester-long project to create a resource for the Northeastern community.

    Contributed Talk

  • IEEE VIS 2021, Workshop: Visualization for Social Good. Talk: “Facilitating Visualization for Social Good in Academic Courses”
  • IEEE VIS 2019, Tutorial: Visualization for Social Good. Talk: “Service-Learning in Visualization”

    • Organizing Experience

  • IEEE VIS 2019, Tutorial: Visualization for Social Good

    • Teaching Experience

  • Projected to teach Data Science 4200: Information Presentation & Visualization (Spring 2023)
  • Teaching Assistant in Data Science 4200: Information Presentation & Visualization (Fall 2022)
  • Teaching Assistant in Data Science 4200: Information Presentation & Visualization (Spring 2022)
  • Teaching Assistant in Data Science 4200: Information Presentation & Visualization (Fall 2021)
  • Service-Learning Teaching Assistant in Data Science 4200: Information Presentation & Visualization (Spring 2021)
  • Teaching Assistant in Data Science 4200: Information Presentation & Visualization (Fall 2019)
  • Full time teacher (substitute English literature and English language teacher) in Maple Leaf International School, Bangladesh (01/2012 to 10/2012)

    • Outreach and Volunteering Experience

  • Program Committee member for IEEE VIS 2021 Workshop on Visualization for Social Good
  • Program Committee member for IEEE VIS 2022 Workshop on Visualization for Social Good

  • Collaborated with a local neighborhood association called Chester Square Neighbors to help them with their data and visualization needs through a design study project in a graduate course on Data Visualization (CS 7250 - Information Visualization: Theory and Applications). Volunteered in the neighborhood association to get a better understanding of the problems they faced regarding their neighborhood park that was in the need for renovation and improved facilities, but the association members lacked concrete data-driven evidence to present to the City Council. The design study project in collaboration with the neighborhood association was aimed to provide necessary data-driven visualizations to the community partners in order to facilitate better communication and presentation of the problems they were facing regarding their park, which in turn would help them get the attention from the City council for funding. (Spring 2019)

  • Volunteered and taught Data Visualization (delivered a lecture on “Common mistakes in Data Visualization” and taught the basics of Tableau) in the Multi-media CS course at Boston Latin Academy. (Spring 2019)

  • Volunteered at the International Conference on Imaging, Vision & Pattern Recognition (ICIVPR 2017)

  • Volunteered at the International conference on Informatics, Electronics and vision conference (ICIEV 2014)

    • Skills

    Research

    Qualitative Survey design, Grounded Theory, Qualitative and Quantitative Evaluation, User-Centered Design, Experimental design, Data Analysis, Latex, Design study theory and implementation, Replication study framework, developing visualization theory and methods.

    Data Science and Visualization

    D3.js, Tableau, SciPy (pandas, NumPy & Matplotlib), MATLAB, Altair, Microsoft Excel

    Design

    Figma, Adobe Illustrator, Rapid prototyping, Microsoft Powerpoint, Presentation design and delivery, Task Analysis, Survey-design, Sketching

    Web and Databases

    Responsive Web Design, Node.js, Firebase, MongoDB, SVG, HTML, CSS

    Programming Languages and Design

    JavaScript, Python, C, Assembly language (Intel 8086)

    Ph.D. Coursework

    Information Visualization, Human Computer Interaction, Algorithms, Advanced Algorithms, Intensive Computer Systems, Machine Learning, Special Topics in Data Visualization

    Awards and Fellowships

    • Best Paper Award at CHI 2020 for the paper Design Study "Lite" Methodology: Expediting Design Studies and Enabling the Synergy of Visualization Pedagogy and Social Good(Paper Link)
    • 1-year Graduate Fellowship Award from the Khoury College of Computer Sciences, Northeastern University. This fellowship is awarded to top admitted PhD candidates in recognition of their outstanding academic accomplishments.
    • Academic Technology Scholar fellowship. This semester-long fellowship is a practicum course and training to help support faculty with integrating and using technology to support teaching and learning

      • Article

    • “Novel Framework For Implementing Design Studies Wins Best Paper At CHI 2020”, Khoury News, Northeastern University (May 28, 2020)
      • Link to Article

    Publications

  • Design Study "Lite" Methodology: Expediting Design Studies and Enabling the Synergy of Visualization Pedagogy and Social Good
    • Syeda, U.H., Murali, P., Roe, L., Berkey, B. and Borkin, M.A.

    [In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-13). DOI: 10.1145/3313831.3376829]

  • Evaluating the Effect of Timeline Shape on Visualization Task Performance
    • Di Bartolomeo, S., Pandey, A., Leventidis, A., Saffo, D., Syeda, U.H., Carstensdottir, E., Seif El-Nasr, M., Borkin, M.A. and Dunne, C.

    [In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-12). DOI: 10.1145/3313831.3376237]

  • A State-of-the-Art Survey of Tasks for Tree Design and Evaluation with a Curated Task Dataset
    • Pandey, A., Syeda, U.H., Shah, C., Guerra-Gomez, J.A. and Borkin, M.A.

    [Conditionally accepted with major revision at IEEE TVCG (Transactions on Visualization & Computer Graphics)]

  • Visual face scanning and emotion perception analysis between autistic and typically developing children.
    • Syeda, U.H., Zafar, Z., Islam, Z.Z., Tazwar, S.M., Rasna, M.J., Kise, K. and Ahad, M.A.R.

    [UbiComp '17 Proceedings of the 2017 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing and Proceedings of the 2017 ACM International Symposium on Wearable Computers (Mental Health: Sensing and Intervention workshop), Pages 844-853, Maui, Hawaii,USA — September 11 - 15, 2017. DOI: 10.1145/3123024.3125618]

  • Towards Identification and Mitigation of Task-Based Challenges in Comparative Visualization Studies
    • Pandey, A., Syeda, U. H., & Borkin, M. (2020).

    [OSF Preprint]

  • Chester Square Park: A Case Study of Visualization for Social Good using Design Study “Lite” Methodology
    • Syeda, U.H., Murali, P. and Borkin, M.A.

    [IEEE VIS Conference, held October 2019 in Vancouver, Canada.]