Dominik Moritz

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Professor at CMU HCII and Research Scientist at Apple

https://www.domoritz.de
domoritz@cmu.edu
@domoritz

Research Area

To enhance people's ability to understand and communicate large and complex data, I develop methods that richly integrate the capabilities of both people and machines. I combine methods from visualization, data management, programming languages, and human-computer interaction to enable effective methods for data analysis and communication. My systems have won awards at premier academic venues, and are used by journalists, data enthusiasts, developers, educators, and the data science community.

Positions

2020–present Professor at Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA
2019–present Research Scientist at Apple Seattle, WA and Pittsburgh, PA
2019 Researcher at Streamlit San Fracisco, CA
2013–2019 Research Assistant at University of Washington Seattle, WA
2017 Research Intern at Microsoft Research Redmond, WA
2016 Research Intern at Microsoft Research Redmond, WA
2015 Research Intern at Google Research Mountain View, CA
2014 Engineering Intern at Google New York City, NY
2012–2013 Intern and Developer at Open Knowledge Foundation London and Berlin
2012–2013 Bachelor's Project at Hasso Plattner Institute Potsdam

Education

2015–2019 Ph.D. in Computer Science & Engineering, University of Washington Seattle, WA

Advised by Jeffrey Heer and Bill Howe.
Thesis: “Interactive Systems for Scalable Visualization & Analysis”.
Member of the Interactive Data Lab and Database Group.

2013–2015 M.S. in Computer Science & Engineering, University of Washington Seattle, WA

Advised by Bill Howe and Jeffrey Heer.

2010–2013 B.S. in IT-Systems Engineering, Hasso Plattner Institute Potsdam, Germany

Thesis: “Algorithms for the Visualization of Software System Evolution”.
GPA: 4.0 (1.0 in German system), highest distinction, rank 1/74
Advanced classes on database implementation, computational geometry, architecture, and logic.

Notable Awards

2020 IEEE VGTC Outstanding Dissertation Award

For my thesis on "Interactive Systems for Scalable Visualization and Analysis".

2018 InfoVis Best Paper

For "Formalizing Visualization Design Knowledge as Constraints: Actionable and Extensible Models in Draco".

2016 InfoVis Best Paper

For "Vega-Lite: A Grammar of Interactive Graphics".

2013–2014 Fulbright Fellowship Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs

Highly competitive, merit-based grant for international educational exchange for students, scholars, teachers and scientists.

2013 DAAD Scholarship German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)

Scholarship to study at a North American university for one academic year, covering tuition and living expenses.

2010–2015 Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes, Bonn

The German National Academic Foundation grants prestigious scholarships to students with outstanding academic achievements. Merit-based grant for B.S. and M.S. studies.

2013 Hasso Plattner Scholarship Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam

One-year scholarship awarded to the highest performing graduates of each year.

Publications [Interactive Version]

Conference

Journal

Book Chapter

B1
Advances in Visualization of Big Data
Leilani Battle, Dominik Moritz, Danyel Fisher, Jeffrey Heer. Chapter of the book “Managing Heterogeneous Data and Polystore Databases” edited by Vijay Gadepally, Sam Madden, Michael Stonebraker and to be published by MIT Press. 2019.

Demo

Workshop

Thesis

T1
Algorithms for the Visualization of Software System Evolution
Dominik Moritz. My bachelor thesis. Not publicly available due to non-disclosure agreement. 2013.

Patents

Mar 2017

Database query for histograms

Bolin Ding, Chi Wang, Danyel Fisher, Dominik Moritz

Mar 2017

Difference visualization between data sets

Bolin Ding, Chi Wang, Danyel Fisher, Dominik Moritz

Mar 2017

Fast approximate results and slow precise results

Bolin Ding, Chi Wang, Danyel Fisher, Dominik Moritz

Mentoring

2020–2021

PhD Students

CMU

PhD Students I am (co-)advising at CMU.

Mentored:

2020–2021

Thesis Commitee

CMU

Mentored:

2020–2021

Research Assistants

CMU

Mentored:

2020

Apple Summer Internship

Apple

Summer interns in my group at Apple.

Mentored:

2019–2020

Vega Ecosystem

Vega Organization

Hung worked with me on a renderer service for Vega-Lite and Vega visualizations. He integrated the renderer into the popular Vega online editor.

Mentored:

2019

Google Summer of Code

University of Washington

The IDL was selected as a mentoring organization for the Google Summer of Code 2019. I mentored two students from India to work on the Vega editor.

Mentored:

2018

Google Summer of Code

University of Washington

The IDL was selected as a mentoring organization for the Google Summer of Code 2018. Together with Kanit "Ham" Wongsuphasawat I mentored two students from India to work on Vega-Lite.

Mentored:

2017–2018

CSE Mentoring Program

University of Washington

Together with Sarah Chasins, I mentored a group of first-year students for over a year. Sarah and I gave advice on finding classes, research projects, collaborators, and advisors, as well as managing conferences.

Mentored:

2015–2019

Mentor Undergraduate Researchers

University of Washington

Mentor students for working on Vega-Lite, Voyager, Polestar, and related projects.

Mentored:

Talks [Interactive Version]

Declarative and Scalable Visualization Design

Robust AI Meetup, Zoom

Visualization for People + Systems

GAMES Webinar, Online
MIT, Boston
Google, Boston
Tableau, Seattle
Northwestern, Evanston
University of Chicago, Chicago
University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver
University of Wisconsin, Madison
New York University (NYU), New York
Microsoft Research, Redmond
Apple (Turi), Seattle
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Pittsburgh
University of California (UCSD), San Diego
University of Toronto, Toronto
University of Illinois (UIUC), Urbana-Champaign
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

Declarative Visualization Design with Vega-Lite and Altair

Open Data Science Conference West (ODSC), San Francisco

Altair: Declarative Visualization in Python

Symposium on Data Science and Statistics (SDSS), Bellevue

Raising the Abstraction of Data Visualization

IBM Research, Bangalore

Data Visualization with Vega-Lite and Altair for Machine Learning

TVM Conference, Seattle

Formalizing Visualization Design Knowledge as Constraints: Actionable and Extensible Models in Draco

IEEE VIS, Berlin
Microsoft Research, Redmond
UW Database Affiliates Workshop, Seattle

Automated Visualization Design with Draco

Tableau Research, Seattle
Microsoft Excel, Redmond

Declarative Visualization with Vega-Lite and Altair

Data Stories Podcast

Vega-Lite: A Grammar of Interactive Graphics

UW ACM Student, Seattle
Technical University Berlin, Berlin
DeepMind (Google), London
City University, London
Microsoft, Redmond
IEEE Infovis, Baltimore
Turi (Apple), Seattle
OpenVis Conf, Boston

Declarative Visualization Design with Vega-Lite

Tintash, Lahore

Visualization Grammars

Dagstuhl Seminar on Connecting Visualization and Data Management Research

Trust, but Verify: Optimistic Visualizations of Approximate Queries for Exploring Big Data

Tableau Research, Seattle
Database Seminar, Microsoft Research, Redmond
ACM CHI, San Jose

What Users Don't Expect about Exploratory Data Analysis on AQP Systems

HILDA at ACM SIGMOD, Chicago

Vega-Lite: A Declarative Format for Visualization

Plotcon, New York City

Voyager: Exploratory Analysis via Faceted Browsing of Visualization Recommendations

SIGGRAPH, Anaheim
Tableau Research, Seattle
IEEE Infovis, Chicago

Perfopticon: Visual Query Analysis for Distributed Databases

Eurovis, Cagliari

Teaching

2020 Interactive Data Science Carnegie Mellon University

Instructor, 75 students
Prepared and taught lectures. Prepared and graded assignments. Co-taught with Adam Perer.

2018 Vega-Lite: A Grammar of Interactive Graphics OpenVis Conf Workshop

Prepared and presented 3.5 hour tutorial at OpenVis Conf in Paris.

2017 HCID 520: User Interface Software & Technology University of Washington

Teaching Assistant for Jeffrey Heer, 30 students
Presented sesssions, updated assignments, graded, held office hours.

2015 CSE 512: Data Visualization University of Washington

Teaching Assistant for Jeffrey Heer, 80 students
Developed and presented tutorials on visualization tools, CSS, and D3. Graded assignments, held office hours.

2017 Vega-Lite Workshop San Diego Supercomputer Center, UCSD

2016 Vega-Lite Workshop UC Davis

2014 SQL Workshop UW eScience Institute

Instructor, 20 participants
One day workshop for scientists as part of Software Carpentry workshop series.

2012 VHDL Hasso Plattner Institute

Prepared course material for class on VHSIC Hardware Description Language.

Service

Reviewer for ACM CHI, IEEE VIS, TVCG, EuroVis, PacificVis, Computers & Graphics, HILDA, and DSIA. Program committee for HILDA 2018, HILDA 2019, and HILDA 2020 at SIGMOD. Organizer of DSIA 2018 and DSIA 2019 at VIS. Session chair at CHI 2019, VIS 2019, VIS 2020. Program committee at VIS 2020 and 2021.

References

Jeffrey Heer
Professor of Computer Science & Engineering
University of Washington
homes.cs.washington.edu/~jheer/

Bill Howe
Professor at the Information School
University of Washington
faculty.washington.edu/billhowe/

Danyel Fisher
Principal Design Researcher
Honeycomb
Former Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research
danyelfisher.info/

Tim Kraska
Professor of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
people.csail.mit.edu/kraska/

Steven Franconeri
Professor of Psychology
Northwestern University
psychology.northwestern.edu/people/faculty/core/profiles/steven-franconeri.html