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Short Bio
Petra Isenberg (petra.isenberg@inria.fr) is a research director(DR) at the Inria Saclay Centre at Université Paris-Saclay, France in the Aviz team and part of the Computer Science Laboratory (LISN) of the University Paris-Saclay. Prior to joining Inria, she received her PhD from the University of Calgary in 2010 on collaborative information visualization. Petra also holds a Diplom-engineer degree in Computational Visualistics from the University of Magdeburg. Her main research areas are visualization and visual analytics with a focus on visualization for non-desktop devices, interaction, and evaluation. She is particularly interested in exploring how people can most effectively work together when analyzing large and complex data sets on novel display technology such as small touch-screens, wall displays, or tabletops. Petra is associate editor-in-chief at IEEE CG&A and the vice-chair of the IEEE VIS Steering Committee.
orcid.org/0000-0002-2948-6417On my papers I list multiple affiliations. What does that mean?
Here in France it is common to cite all affiliations that support you or your lab in some form - and the affiliation you list on papers isn't always the place that your salary comes from. The same is true for me. My official affiliation is:
Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS, Inria, Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire des Sciences du Numérique, 91405 Orsay, France
or a bit shorter
Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS, Inria, LISN, 91405 Orsay, France
Let's take this apart a little. Université Paris-Saclay was once the Université Paris Sud and a few other places that merged together. My team is part of the Université Paris-Saclay and in particular the LISN laboratory, which is the computer science lab of the university. LISN stands for "Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire des Sciences du Numérique" or "interdisciplinary computer science laboratory". A lab in this case is like a faculty in other parts of the world. My team belongs to a department in this laboratory called "Human Centred Interaction" department (in French: "Interaction avec l'Humain", short name "Interaction").
Almost all of our PhD students are inscribed at Paris-Saclay University, they may have funding from there, we get a little funding from them, and we give courses there as well. LISN is co-funded by the CNRS which explains why it now also needs to figure into my official affiliation. My actual employer that sends paychecks is Inria, the French National Research Institute for Computer Science and Automation. My team is called Aviz.
Selected Awards
| Nomination | IEEE VGTC Visualization Academy | 2023 |
| IEEE Senior Researcher | 2023 | |
| Research Excellence Award | PEDR Inria | 2022--2025 |
| Research Excellence Award | PEDR Inria | 2017--2021 |
| PEDR Inria | 2013--2017 | |
| Departmental Research Award (University of Calgary) | 2005-2007 | |
| Best graduate in Computer Science (University of Magdeburg) | 2005 | |
| Best graduate in Computational Visualistics (University of Magdeburg) | 2005 | |
| Best graduate (Limes-Gymnasium Welzheim / high school) | 1999 | |
| Best paper Award | Perception! Immersion! Empowerment! Superpowers as Inspiration for Visualization at IEEE VIS | 2021 |
| Evaluating Information Visualization in Large Companies: Challenges, Experiences and Recommendations (Beliv Workshop) | 2010 | |
| Best Poster Award | Award for the best poster design of the IEEE InfoVis 2020 Conference for “Black-and-White Textures for Visualization on E-ink Displays | 2020 |
| Best Paper Honorable Mention | An empirical analysis of pool hopping behavior in the Bitcoin blockchain (IEEE ICBC) | 2021 |
| Supporting Handoff in Asynchronous Collaborative Sensemaking Using Knowledge-Transfer Graphs (IEEE VAST) | 2018 | |
| `PolemicTweet: Video Annotation and Analysis through Tagged Tweets'' (Interact) | 2013 | |
| Evaluation of Alternative Glyph Designs for Time Series Data in a Small Multiple Setting (ACM CHI) | 2013 | |
| Efficient Structure-Aware Selection Techniques for 3D Point Cloud Visualizations with 2DOF Input (IEEE SCiVis) | 2012 | |
| An Exploratory Study of Co-located Collaborative Visual Analytics around a Tabletop Display (IEEE VAST) | 2010 | |
| Collaborative Brushing and Linking for Co-located Visual Analytics of Document Collections (EuroVis) | 2009 | |
| Best Poster Honorable Mention | A systematic review of online bitcoin visualizations (EuroVis) | 2019 |
| Research Challenge Awards | Outstanding Comprehensive Mini-Challenge 1 Solution: Award for contribution to the IEEE VIS VAST 2020 Challenge 1 for GraphletMatchMaker | 2020 |
| Clear Research Strategy VAST Challenge Award for Haztrailz: Exploratory Analysis of Trajectory and Sensor Data | 2016 | |
| Service Awards | VGTC Service Award for co-chairing the 2014 Beliv Workshop at IEEE VIS | 2015 |
Education
| 2010 | Ph.D. Computer Science University of Calgary |
| Co-located Collaborative Information Visualization | |
| Advisor: Sheelagh Carpendale | |
| Committee: Saul Greenberg, Amy Gooch, Patrick Feng, Colin Ware | |
| 2004 | Diplom-Engineer University of Magdeburg |
| Focus+Context Visualization of Relations in Hierarchical Data | |
| Advisor: Stefan Schlechtweg | |
| Second reviewer: Sheelagh Carpendale | |
| 1999 | Abitur Limes-Gymnasium Welzheim, Germany |
| 1997 | High School Diploma Stephen Decatur Highschool, Decatur, USA |
Research Experience and Employment
| 2010-today | Inria, Saclay, France |
| Research Scientist (ranks: CR1 2013--2022, DR2 2022-today) | |
| Winter 2009/10 | University of Groningen, Groningen, NL |
| Visiting Researcher | |
| 2004-2009 | University of Calgary |
| Ph.D. Student Researcher | |
| Fall 2008 | Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA, USA |
| Research Intern | |
| Spring 2008 | Inria, Saclay, France |
| Research Intern | |
| Fall 2003 | National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan |
| Research Intern | |
| Spring, Summer 2003 | University of Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany |
| Research Assistant | |
| Fall 2002 | University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada |
| Research Intern | |
| 2000-Summer 2002 | University of Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany |
| Research Assistant |
Selected Service
- Vice/co-chair IEEE VIS Steering committee (2021--)
- Associate editor Computer Graphics Forum 2023--
- Associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 2018-2022
- Paper Chair for ACM Mobile HCI, 2022
- Paper Chair for ACM ISS, 2021
- Paper Chair for IEEE Information Visualization 2018, 2019
Other Sources
- My Google Scholar Profile (my publications page here makes a better distinction between paper types, though)
- My DBLP page (my publications page here is more complete, though)
- My LinkedIn page (I update this semi-regularly)
- Microsoft Academic Profile