Yong Wang Turns Visualization Into Insights

“Visualization helps individuals perceive complicated concepts,” Wang says. “If we design these instruments effectively, they’ll make superior applied sciences accessible to everybody.”

For his work within the area, the IEEE Pc Society visualization and graphics technical committee introduced him with its 2025 Important New Researcher Award. The popularity highlights his rising affect in fields together with human-computer interplay and human-AI collaboration—areas changing into extra necessary because the world generates extra knowledge than people can simply interpret.

Rising up in rural Hunan

Wang was born in southwestern Hunan Province. China’s economic system was nonetheless creating, and life in his village was modest. Most households in Hunan grew rice, greens, and fruit to assist themselves.

Wang’s dad and mom labored in agriculture too, and his father typically traveled to cities to earn cash working in a manufacturing unit or on building jobs. The additional revenue helped assist the household and made it doable for Wang to attend school.

“I’m very grateful to my dad and mom,” Wang says. “They by no means attended college, however they strongly supported my schooling.”

“If we construct instruments that assist individuals perceive data, then extra individuals can take part in science and innovation. That’s the actual energy of visualization.”

Expertise was scarce within the village, he says. Computer systems have been nearly nonexistent, and televisions have been thought of treasured, costly family possessions.

One childhood reminiscence nonetheless makes him chuckle: Throughout a summer time trip, he and his brother spent so many hours taking part in video video games on a easy console related to the household’s tv that the TV display screen finally burned out.

“My mom was very offended,” he recollects. “At the moment, a TV was a really invaluable factor.”

He says that regardless of by no means having used a laptop computer or experimenting with digital tools, he was fascinated by the applied sciences he noticed on TV reveals.

Discovering robotics and engineering

His dad and mom inspired a sensible profession akin to medication or civil engineering, however he felt drawn to robotics and computing, he says.

“I didn’t actually perceive what laptop science concerned,” he says. “However from what I noticed on TV, it appeared thrilling and superior.”

He enrolled at Harbin Institute of Expertise, in northeastern China. The esteemed college is thought for its engineering applications. His main—automation— mixed parts of electrical engineering, robotics, and management programs.

One of many defining experiences of his undergraduate years, he says, was a college robotics competitors. Wang and his teammates designed a robotic able to autonomously navigating round obstacles.

The design was easy in contrast with skilled programs, he acknowledges. However, he says, the expertise was exhilarating. His workforce positioned second, and Wang started to see engineering as each artistic and collaborative.

He graduated with a bachelor’s diploma in 2011 and briefly labored as an assistant on the Analysis Institute of Clever Management and Programs at Harbin.

In 2014 he took a place as a analysis intern working at Da Jiang Innovation in Shenzhen, China.

That have helped him make clear his future, he says: “I spotted I didn’t take pleasure in doing repetitive work or just following directions. I needed to discover concepts that me, and I needed to conduct analysis.” The conclusion pushed him towards graduate faculty, he says.

Constructing instruments that assist people work with AI

Wang acquired a grasp’s diploma in sample recognition and picture processing from the Huazhong College of Science and Expertise, in Wuhan, China, in 2016.

He then enrolled within the laptop science Ph.D. program on the Hong Kong College of Science and Expertise and earned the diploma in 2018. He remained there as a postdoctoral researcher till 2020, when he moved to Singapore to hitch Singapore Administration College as an assistant professor of computing and knowledge programs. He moved over to Nanyang Technological College as an assistant professor in 2024.

His analysis focuses on a problem dealing with almost each enterprise: make sense of the large quantities of information being generated.

“We stay in an period of knowledge explosions,” Wang says. “Large quantities of information are generated, and it’s tough for individuals to interpret all of it to make higher enterprise selections.”

Knowledge visualization presents an answer by turning complicated data into pictures, patterns, and diagrams that folks can extra readily perceive.

However many visualizations nonetheless have to be designed manually by consultants, Wang notes. It’s a time-consuming course of that creates a bottleneck, he says.

His resolution is to make use of massive language fashions and multimodal programs that may generate textual content, pictures, video, and sensor knowledge concurrently and automate elements of the method.

One system developed by his analysis group lets customers design complicated infographics via natural-language directions mixed with easy interactions akin to drawing on a touchscreen with a finger. It permits nontechnical individuals to generate visualizations as an alternative of hiring skilled designers.

One other focus of Wang’s analysis is human-AI collaboration. AI programs can analyze knowledge at monumental scale, however individuals nonetheless should be the ultimate decision-makers, he says.

Visualization helps bridge the hole between human intention and AI’s complicated calculations by making the method an AI system makes use of to succeed in a end result extra clear and comprehensible.

“If individuals perceive how the AI system works,” Wang says, “they’ll collaborate with it extra successfully.”

He not too long ago explored how visualization methods may assist researchers perceive quantum computing, a area the place core ideas—akin to superposition, the place a bit might be in multiple state at a time—are summary. In classical computing, the bit state is binary: It’s both 1 or 0. A quantum bit, or qubit, might be 1, 0, or each. The variations get extra dizzying from there.

Visualization instruments may assist scientists monitor quantum programs and interpret quantum machine-learning fashions, he says.

The significance of IEEE communities

Instructing and mentoring college students stay among the many most significant elements of Wang’s profession, he says.

Skilled communities such because the IEEE Pc Society, he says, play a significant function in serving to him rework early-stage graduate college students uncertain of which strains of inquiry they’ll pursue into unbiased researchers with a stable technical focus. Via conferences, publications, and technical committees, IEEE connects Wang with different researchers working in visualization, AI, and human-computer interactions, he says.

These connections have helped him share concepts, collaborate, and keep updated on improvements within the analysis neighborhood.

Receiving the Important New Researcher award motivates him to proceed pushing the sphere ahead, he says.

Wanting again, he says, the gap between his rural village in Hunan and a global analysis profession nonetheless feels outstanding. However, he says, the journey displays one thing bigger about his chosen area: “If we construct instruments that assist individuals perceive data, then extra individuals can take part in science and innovation.

“That’s the actual energy of visualization.”