Jarke J. (Jack) van Wijk (born 1959) is a Dutch

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...

, a professor in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at the

Eindhoven University of Technology The Eindhoven University of Technology ( nl, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven), abbr. TU/e, is a public technical university in the Netherlands, located in the city of Eindhoven. In 2020–21, around 14,000 students were enrolled in its BSc a ...

, and an expert in

information visualization Information is an abstract concept that refers to that which has the power to inform. At the most fundamental level information pertains to the interpretation of that which may be sensed. Any natural process that is not completely random, ...

Biography

Van Wijk received his M.S. from the

Delft University of Technology Delft University of Technology ( nl, Technische Universiteit Delft), also known as TU Delft, is the oldest and largest Dutch public technical university, located in Delft, Netherlands. As of 2022 it is ranked by QS World University Rankings among ...

in 1982. His master's thesis, on simulation of traffic collisions, led him to become interested in computer visualization, and he remained at Delft for his doctoral studies, completing a Ph.D. in 1986 under the supervision of Dennis J. McConalogue. He worked at the

Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands The Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN) is one of the largest energy research institute in Europe and holds a strong international position. With and for the market, ECN develops knowledge and technology that enable a transition to a ...

from 1988 until 1998, when he joined the Eindhoven faculty; he was promoted to a full professorship in 2001. As well as being a faculty member at TU Eindhoven, van Wijk is the vice president for scientific affairs at MagnaView, a Dutch information visualization company.MagnaView Management
, retrieved 2011-11-10.

Research

In information visualization, Van Wijk is known for his research in

texture synthesis Texture synthesis is the process of algorithmically constructing a large digital image from a small digital sample image by taking advantage of its structural content. It is an object of research in computer graphics and is used in many fields, amo ...

, treemaps, and

flow visualization Flow visualization or flow visualisation in fluid dynamics is used to make the flow patterns visible, in order to get qualitative or quantitative information on them. Overview Flow visualization is the art of making flow patterns visible. ...

. His work on

map projection In cartography, map projection is the term used to describe a broad set of transformations employed to represent the two-dimensional curved surface of a globe on a plane. In a map projection, coordinates, often expressed as latitude and longitud ...

won the 2009 Henry Johns Award of the

British Cartographic Society The British Cartographic Society (BCS) is an association of individuals and organisations dedicated to exploring and developing the world of maps. It is a registered charity. Membership includes national mapping agencies, publishers, designers, ...

for best cartographic journal article. He has twice been program co-chair for

IEEE Visualization The IEEE Visualization Conference (VIS) is an annual conference on scientific visualization, information visualization, and visual analytics administrated by the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Visualization and Graphics. As ranked b ...

, and once for IEEE InfoVis. In 2007, he received an IEEE Technical Achievement Award for his visualization research.. In

graph drawing Graph drawing is an area of mathematics and computer science combining methods from geometric graph theory and information visualization to derive two-dimensional depictions of graph (discrete mathematics), graphs arising from applications such a ...

, van Wijk has worked on the visualization of

small-world network A small-world network is a type of mathematical graph in which most nodes are not neighbors of one another, but the neighbors of any given node are likely to be neighbors of each other and most nodes can be reached from every other node by a sm ...

s and on the depiction of abstract trees as biological trees. He has also conducted user studies that showed that the standard depiction of directed edges in graph drawings using arrowheads is less effective at conveying the directionality of the edges to readers than other conventions such as tapering. He was one of two invited speakers at the 19th

International Symposium on Graph Drawing The International Symposium on Graph Drawing (GD) is an annual academic conference in which researchers present peer reviewed papers on graph drawing, information visualization of network information, geometric graph theory, and related topics. S ...

in 2011, and the capstone speaker at the

2013.2013 IEEE VIS Guest Speakers
retrieved 2014-11-18.

References

External links

Home page
at TU Eindhoven {{DEFAULTSORT:Wijk, Jack 1959 births Living people Dutch computer scientists Graph drawing people Information visualization experts Delft University of Technology alumni Academic staff of the Eindhoven University of Technology