Yong Wang Turns Visualization Into Insights

When Yong Wang just lately obtained one of many highest honors for early-career knowledge visualization researchers, it marked a milestone in a unprecedented journey that started removed from the world’s expertise hubs.

Wang was born in a small farming village in southern China to oldsters with restricted formal schooling. At this time the IEEE member and affiliate editor of IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Laptop Graphics is an assistant professor within the Faculty of Computing and Knowledge Science atNanyang Technological College, in Singapore. He research how individuals can make use ofknowledge visualization methods to get extra out of large-scale datasets in addition to superior synthetic intelligence methods.

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

For his work within the discipline, theIEEE Laptop Society visualization and graphics technical committee introduced him with its 2025 Important New Researcher Award. The popularity highlights his rising affect in fields together with knowledge visualization, human-computer interplay and human-AI collaboration—areas turning into extra necessary because the world generates extra knowledge than people can simply interpret.

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

Rising up in rural Hunan

Wang was born in in a small farming village in southern China. China’s financial system was nonetheless creating, and life in his village was modest. Most households in Hunan grew rice, greens, and fruit to help themselves.

Wang’s mother and father labored in agriculture too, and his father typically traveled to cities to earn cash working in a manufacturing unit or on building jobs. The additional revenue helped help the household and made it potential for Wang to attend faculty.

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

“If we construct instruments that assist individuals perceive data, then extra individuals 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 valuable, costly family possessions.

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

“My mom was very indignant,” he remembers. “At the moment, a TV was a really useful 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 mother and father inspired a sensible profession comparable 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 regarded thrilling and superior.”

He enrolled at Harbin Institute of Know-how, in northeastern China. The esteemed college is understood for its engineering applications. His main—automation—mixed parts 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 workforce positioned second, and Wang started to see engineering as each inventive and collaborative.

He graduated with a bachelor’s diploma in 2011, after which pursued a grasp’s diploma in sample recognition and picture processing from the Huazhong College of Science and Know-how, in Wuhan, China.

In 2014 he took a place as a analysis intern working at a expertise firm 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 needed to discover concepts that me, and I needed to conduct analysis.” The belief pushed him towards graduate faculty, he says.

In 2014 he took a place as a analysis intern working a expertise firm 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 needed to discover concepts that me, and I needed to conduct analysis.” The belief pushed him towards graduate faculty, he says.

Constructing instruments that assist people work with AI

He enrolled within the laptop 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 data programs. He moved over to Nanyang Technological College as an assistant professor in 2024.

His analysis focuses on a problem dealing with almost each enterprise: the way to make sense of the large quantities of information being generated.

He and his college students, collaborators have developed a collection of approaches to advocate or routinely generate acceptable visualizations, together with infographics.

It permits nontechnical individuals to create visualizations as a substitute of hiring skilled designers.

One other focus of Wang’s analysis is human-AI collaboration. AI programs can analyze knowledge at monumental scale, however individuals 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 achieve a consequence extra clear and comprehensible.

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

He just lately explored how visualization methods might assist researchers perceive quantum computing, a discipline the place core ideas—comparable to superposition, the place a bit may be in multiple 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, may 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

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

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

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

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

One system developed by his analysis group lets customers design advanced infographics by way of natural-language directions mixed with easy interactions comparable to drawing on a touchscreen with a finger. It permits nontechnical individuals to generate visualizations as a substitute of hiring skilled designers.

One other focus of his analysis is human-AI collaboration. AI programs can analyze knowledge at monumental scale, however individuals 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 achieve a consequence extra clear and comprehensible.

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

He just lately explored how visualization methods might assist researchers perceive quantum computing, a discipline the place core ideas—comparable to superposition, the place a bit may be in multiple 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, may 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

Instructing 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 rework early-stage graduate college students not sure of which strains of inquiry they may pursue into unbiased 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 sector ahead, he says.

Trying again, he says, the space between his rural village in Hunan and a global analysis profession nonetheless feels outstanding. However, he says, the journey displays one thing bigger about his chosen discipline: “If we construct instruments that assist individuals perceive data, then extra individuals can take part in science and innovation.

“That’s the true energy of visualization.”