Sanghani Center Student Spotlight: Han Liu

Having earned a bachelor of science degree in computer science at Virginia Tech in 2020, Han Liu remained at the university to continue his education and pursue a master’s degree. 

“On a personal note, I love the beautiful surroundings in Blacksburg,” said Liu. “But more importantly, my decision was influenced by the professors I have met here who are passionate about their fields and actively support students in their studies and research.” 

Liu, who is advised by Chris North, added that “as a graduate student, the Sanghani Center has provided me with many exciting academic and research opportunities.”

Liu’s research focuses on visual analytics and how to represent data in a way that helps users understand and interpret it more easily.

“Existing notebook platforms have different capabilities for supporting the use of visual analytics and it is not clear which platform to choose for implementing visual analytics notebooks,” said Liu. “My work explores how to best implement these notebooks to solve problems, particularly in data science scenarios.” 

On October 16, Liu will present a short paper, “Case Study Comparison of Computational Notebook Platforms for Interactive Visual Analytics,” at the Visualization in Data Science (VDS) Symposium associated with IEEE VIS 2022 in Oklahoma City.

He is on track to graduate this semester (FALL 2022) and his ultimate goal “is to become a data scientist who can analyze data for actionable insights and help people by solving real-world problems.”