Yong Wang Turns Visualization Into Insights

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

For his work within the subject, the IEEE Laptop Society visualization and graphics technical committee offered 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 turning into extra necessary because the world generates extra information 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 facility or on building jobs. The additional earnings helped assist the household and made it potential for Wang to attend faculty.

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

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

Know-how was scarce within the village, he says. Computer systems had been nearly nonexistent, and televisions had been thought of treasured, costly family possessions.

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

“My mom was very offended,” he remembers. “At the moment, a TV was a really beneficial 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 exhibits.

Discovering robotics and engineering

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

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

He enrolled at Harbin Institute of Know-how, in northeastern China. The esteemed college is understood for its engineering packages. His main—automation— mixed components 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 staff 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 wished to discover concepts that me, and I wished to conduct analysis.” The belief 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 Know-how, in Wuhan, China, in 2016.

He then enrolled within the pc science Ph.D. program on the Hong Kong College of Science and Know-how and earned the diploma in 2018. He remained there as a postdoctoral researcher till 2020, when he moved to Singapore to affix 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 going through practically each enterprise: find out how to make sense of the large quantities of knowledge being generated.

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

Knowledge visualization provides an answer by turning advanced data into photos, patterns, and diagrams that individuals can extra readily perceive.

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

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

One system developed by his analysis group lets customers design advanced infographics by means of natural-language directions mixed with easy interactions reminiscent of drawing on a touchscreen with a finger. It permits nontechnical folks 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 information at huge scale, however folks nonetheless have to be the ultimate decision-makers, he says.

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

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

He just lately explored how visualization strategies might assist researchers perceive quantum computing, a subject the place core ideas—reminiscent of superposition, the place a bit might be in a couple of 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 might assist scientists monitor quantum programs and interpret quantum machine-learning fashions, he says.

The significance of IEEE communities

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

Skilled communities such because the IEEE Laptop Society, he says, play a significant position in serving to him remodel early-stage graduate college students not sure of which strains of inquiry they may pursue into impartial researchers with a stable technical focus. By means of 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 group.

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 exceptional. However, he says, the journey displays one thing bigger about his chosen subject: “If we construct instruments that assist folks perceive data, then extra folks can take part in science and innovation.

“That’s the true energy of visualization.”