Wednesday, October 22:

"Visualization a Decade and a Half Later"
Gordon Bell, Microsoft

Abstract Exactly 13 years tomorrow (October 23), I gave the first Keynote to kickoff this first visualization conference, after an emergence of Visualization in an 1987 NSF Report. Several challenges were posed including photo realism or a Turing test for experimental data and insight equivalent to the graphs found in Tufte. Information Visualization (and vizaneers) was recognized as a separate form of insight, bifurcating (1995) a mostly data visualization conference. I will describe a few of the 1990 challenges, updating for new needs in data and information visualization.

Bio

Gordon Bell is a senior researcher in Microsoft's Media Presence Research Group - a part of the Bay Area Research Center (BARC) maintaining an interest in startup ventures. Previously, Bell spent 23 years (1960-1983) at Digital Equipment Corporation as Vice President of Research and Development, where he was responsible for Digital's products. He was the architect of various mini- and time-sharing computers (e.g. the PDP-6) and led the development of DEC's VAX and the VAX Computing Environment. Bell has been involved in, or responsible for, the design of many products at Digital, Encore, Ardent, and a score of other companies. He has been involved in the design of about 30 multiprocessors.

Bell has an SB and SM degree from MIT (1956-57) and honorary D. Eng. from WPI (1993). During 1966-72 he was Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Carnegie-Mellon University. In 1986-1987 he was the first Assistant Director of the National Science Foundation's Computing Directorate. He led the National Research and Education Network (NREN) panel that became the NII/GII, and was an author of the first High Performance Computer and Communications Initiative.

Bell has authored books and papers about computer structures and start-up companies. In April 1991, Addison-Wesley published High Tech Ventures: The Guide to Entrepreneurial Success, which describes the Bell-Mason Diagnostic, for analyzing new ventures. His first book, Computer Structures, with Allen Newell was published in 1970 by McGraw-Hill.

He is a director of the Bell-Mason Group supplying expert systems for venture development to startups, investors, governments, and intrapreneurial ventures as described in the book High Tech Ventures, by Bell and McNamara. The Bell Mason Diagnostic for startups and IntraVentures is available through Diamond Technology Partners, Inc.

Bell is a member of various professional organizations including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Fellow), American Association for the Advancement of Science (Fellow), ACM (Fellow), IEEE (Fellow and Computer Pioneer), and the National Academy of Engineering. His awards include: the IEEE Von Neumann Medal, the AEA Inventor Award for the greatest economic contribution to the New England region, the IEEE 2001 Vladamir Karapetoff Eminent Member's Award of Eta Kappa Nu, and The 1991 National Medal of Technology "for his continuing intellectual and industrial achievements in the field of computer design; and for his leading role in establishing … computers that serve as a significant tool for engineering, science, and industry."

For more information, visit http://www.research.microsoft.com/users/gbell/.