Yong Wang Turns Visualization Into Insights

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

For his work within the discipline, the IEEE Computer Society visualization and graphics technical committee introduced him with its 2025 Significant New Researcher Award. The popularity highlights his rising affect in fields together with human-computer interaction and human-AI collaboration—areas turning into extra essential 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 financial 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 usually 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 attainable 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 folks perceive data, then extra folks can take part in science and innovation. That’s the actual energy of visualization.”

Know-how was scarce within the village, he says. Computer systems have been virtually nonexistent, and televisions have been thought-about treasured, costly household possessions.

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

“My mom was very indignant,” he remembers. “At the moment, a TV was a really helpful 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 similar 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 Technology, in northeastern China. The esteemed college is understood for its engineering packages. His main—automation— mixed components of electrical engineering, robotics, and control systems.

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 methods, 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 Research Institute of Intelligent Control and Systems 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 noticed 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 conclusion pushed him towards graduate faculty, he says.

Constructing instruments that assist people work with AI

Wang acquired a grasp’s diploma in pattern recognition and image processing from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology, in Wuhan, China, in 2016.

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

His analysis focuses on a problem going through almost each enterprise: find out how to make sense of the large quantities of knowledge being generated.

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

Knowledge visualization gives an answer by turning advanced data into pictures, 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 large language models and multimodal methods that may generate textual content, pictures, video, and sensor information concurrently and automate elements of the method.

One system developed by his analysis group lets customers design advanced infographics via natural-language directions mixed with easy interactions similar to 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 methods can analyze information at huge scale, however folks nonetheless must 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 succeed in a end result extra clear and comprehensible.

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

He not too long ago explored how visualization strategies may assist researchers perceive quantum computing, a discipline the place core ideas—similar to superposition, the place a bit could 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, could be 1, 0, or each. The variations get extra dizzying from there.

Visualization instruments may assist scientists monitor quantum methods 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 Computer 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 are going to pursue into impartial researchers with a strong 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 exceptional. However, he says, the journey displays one thing bigger about his chosen discipline: “If we construct instruments that assist folks perceive data, then extra folks can take part in science and innovation.

“That’s the actual energy of visualization.”