Kirk Goldsberry - Spatial and Visual Analytics: Giving the World an MRI

A few seats left: Monday, September 24, 3:30 to 5:00 PM (EDT) at the IBM Center for Social Business, Cambridge, MA

Register here at Eventbrite.

Join us for a talk with Kirk Goldsberry, a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University’s Center for Geographic Analysis and an Assistant Professor of Geography at Michigan State University.

Kirk's research focuses on the visual dimensions of analytical communication. He is particularly interested in the links between visual form, graphic design, and spatial reasoning. This avenue of research is significantly influenced by the principles of cartography, visualization, cognitive psychology, vision science, spatial analysis, and human computer interaction.

Kirk received a Ph.D. from the Department of Geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in August, 2007. His dissertation investigated real-time traffic maps - both to understand and enhance their future design.

More recently, Kirk found a way to blend his research expertise and his love of basketball; in 2010, he developed CourtVision, an ensemble of analytical techniques designed to quantify, visualize, and communicate spatial aspects of NBA performance with exceptional precision and clarity.

IBM Research Cambridge is looking for a UX Research Design Engineer

Do you consider yourself to be both a designer and an engineer? When you look at a user interface, do you envision a different way of presenting the information? Do you play with visualization toolkits in your spare time?

The IBM Collaborative User Experience Research group, part of IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center, is looking for someone who can both design and contribute to building innovative visual interfaces, tools for new ways of collaborating, and one-of-a-kind visualizations for exploring complex data analytics.

In this role, you will join a team of researchers and developers who are setting the standard of design of social media tools for businesses. Our research focuses on collaboration and social media for businesses, and our goal is to imagine and invent the future of how people will work together. Our applications and research discoveries inform IBM's next generation of products for workplace collaboration and data analytics.

Our ideal candidate will have a combination of the following skills:

• Demonstrated experience in designing the user interface of database-driven Web and mobile applications, bringing these designs from concept through to a working prototype
• Demonstrated ability to distill a complex data set into an impactful and insightful visual representation of the data
• Expertise in the Adobe Creative Suite or similar
• Expertise in Web UI technologies (HTML, CSS, AJAX, and JavaScript)
• Experience with one or more web application frameworks such as Ruby on Rails or J2EE
• Experience with one or more data visualization tools such as D3 or Raphaeljs
• Experience developing mockups and prototypes to effectively communicate interaction and design ideas
• Strong interest in social media, communication tools, and data
• Strong interest in research questions about user behavior
• Excellent leadership, communication and teamwork skills

Click here to learn more about this position and to apply.