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Current Seminar Series

January 19, 2026

No events scheduled

January 20, 2026

February 03, 2026

HCI Seminar - Alberto Cairo - Principled Data Visualization

Alberto Cairo
University of Miami

Part Of

4:00P
- 5:00P

Location

32-D463
Add to Calendar 2026-02-03 16:00:00 2026-02-03 17:00:00 America/New_York HCI Seminar - Alberto Cairo - Principled Data Visualization Abstract:Conversations and scholarship about charts and maps often focus on technical aspects (software, techniques, and practices,) or on perceptual and cognitive effectiveness. They don't discuss the motivations, goals, and ethos of the designers who create those charts with the same frequency. This talk will try to shift that balance, and outline a very personal and tentative ethical framework.Bio:Alberto Cairo is a Professor and Knight Chair in Infographics and Data Visualization at the University of Miami. He has been graphics director at news publications in Spain and Brazil, and today he collaborates with tech companies such as Google, and with international institutions such as the European Union and the World Bank. Cairo is the author of four books, The Functional Art (2012), The Truthful Art (2016), How Charts Lie (2019), and The Art of Insight (2023), and in January of 2026 he launched the Open Visualization Academy (https://openvisualizationacademy.org/) a large and constantly expanding library of free courses about information design and data visualization.This talk will also be streamed over Zoom: https://mit.zoom.us/j/94291735560. TBD

February 10, 2026

February 17, 2026

Visual Computing Seminar: Learning a distance measure from the information-estimation geometry of data

Guy Ohayon
Flatiron Institute
12:00P
- 1:00P

Location

32-D463
Add to Calendar 2026-02-17 12:00:00 2026-02-17 13:00:00 America/New_York Visual Computing Seminar: Learning a distance measure from the information-estimation geometry of data Abstract:The perceptual distance between images is widely believed to be related to the distribution of natural images. But how can a probability distribution give rise to a distance measure—let alone one that aligns with human perception? What properties should such a distance satisfy, and how can it be learned from an image database in an unsupervised manner? In this talk, I will address these questions by presenting the Information–Estimation Metric (IEM), a novel form of distance function derived from a given probability density over a domain of signals. The IEM is rooted in a fundamental relationship between information theory and estimation theory, which links the log-probability of a signal with the errors of an optimal denoiser, applied to noisy observations of the signal. For Gaussian-distributed signals, the IEM coincides with the Mahalanobis distance. But for more complex distributions, it adapts, both locally and globally, to the geometry of the distribution. I will discuss and illustrate the theoretical properties of the IEM—including its global and local behavior. Finally, I will demonstrate that the IEM effectively predicts human perceptual judgments when trained (unsupervised) on natural images.Bio:Guy is a postdoctoral researcher working with Eero Simoncelli at the Flatiron Institute. His research focuses on developing computational models of human perception that are grounded in principles from information theory. He received his PhD in Computer Science from the Technion—Israel Institute of Technology, where he worked with Michael Elad and Tomer Michaeli on the design and theoretical analysis of image restoration and compression methods that rely on generative models. TBD

February 19, 2026

Human-Machine Partnerships in Computer-Integrated Interventional Medicine: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

Russell H. Taylor
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD

Part Of

11:00A
- 12:00P

Location

32-370
Add to Calendar 2026-02-19 11:00:00 2026-02-19 12:00:00 America/New_York Human-Machine Partnerships in Computer-Integrated Interventional Medicine: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow This talk will discuss insights gathered over 35 years of research on medical robotics and computer-integrated interventional medicine (CIIM), both at IBM and at Johns Hopkins University. The goal of this research has been the creation of a three-way partnership between physicians, technology, and information to improve treatment processes. CIIM systems combine innovative algorithms, robotic devices, imaging systems, sensors, and human-machine interfaces to work cooperatively with surgeons in the planning and execution of surgery and other interventionalprocedures. For individual patients, CIIM systems can enable less invasive, safer, and more cost-effective treatments. Since these systems have the ability to act as “flight data recorders” in the operating room, they can enable the use of statistical methods to improve treatment processes for future patients and to promote physician training. We will illustrate these themes with examples from our past and current work, with special attention to the human-machine partnership aspects, and will offer some thoughts about future research opportunities and system evolution. TBD

February 24, 2026

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