Yong Wang Turns Visualization Into Insights

When Yong Wang not too long ago 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 southwestern China to folks with little formal training and few digital gadgets. In the present day the IEEE member and affiliate editor of IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Pc Graphics is an assistant professor of computing and knowledge science at Nanyang Technological College, in Singapore. He research how individuals can make use of knowledge visualization strategies to get extra out of synthetic intelligence instruments.

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

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

Rising up in rural Hunan

Wang was born in southwestern Hunan Province. China’s financial system was nonetheless growing, 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 typically traveled to cities to earn cash working in a manufacturing facility or on development jobs. The additional revenue helped assist the household and made it attainable for Wang to attend faculty.

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

“If we construct instruments that assist individuals perceive info, then extra individuals 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 nearly nonexistent, and televisions have been thought-about valuable, costly family possessions.

One childhood reminiscence nonetheless makes him chortle: Throughout a summer time trip, he and his brother spent so many hours enjoying video video games on a easy console related 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 helpful factor.”

He says that regardless of by no means having used a laptop computer or experimenting with digital gear, he was fascinated by the applied sciences he noticed on TV exhibits.

Discovering robotics and engineering

His dad and mom inspired a sensible profession equivalent to medication or civil engineering, however he felt drawn to robotics and computing, he says.

“I didn’t actually perceive what pc science concerned,” he says. “However from what I noticed on TV, it appeared thrilling and superior.”

He enrolled at Harbin Institute of Know-how, in northeastern China. The esteemed college is thought for its engineering packages. His main—automation— mixed parts {of electrical} engineering, robotics, and management methods.

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 crew 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 Analysis Institute of Clever Management and Programs 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 get pleasure from doing repetitive work or just following directions. I wished to discover concepts that me, and I wished to conduct analysis.” The belief pushed him towards graduate faculty, he says.

Constructing instruments that assist people work with AI

Wang obtained a grasp’s diploma in sample recognition and picture processing from the Huazhong College of Science and Know-how, in Wuhan, China, in 2016.

He then enrolled within the pc 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 knowledge methods. He moved over to Nanyang Technological College as an assistant professor in 2024.

His analysis focuses on a problem dealing with practically each enterprise: easy methods to make sense of the big quantities of information being generated.

“We reside in an period of data explosions,” Wang says. “Big quantities of information are generated, and it’s tough for individuals to interpret all of it to make higher enterprise selections.”

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

However many visualizations nonetheless have to be designed manually by specialists, 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 methods that may generate textual content, photographs, video, and sensor knowledge concurrently and automate components 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 equivalent to drawing on a touchscreen with a finger. It permits nontechnical individuals 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 knowledge at huge 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 end result extra clear and comprehensible.

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

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

Visualization instruments might 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 components of Wang’s profession, he says.

Skilled communities such because the IEEE Pc Society, he says, play a serious position in serving to him rework early-stage graduate college students uncertain of which traces of inquiry they are going to pursue into impartial researchers with a stable technical focus. By means of 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 Vital 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 exceptional. However, he says, the journey displays one thing bigger about his chosen discipline: “If we construct instruments that assist individuals perceive info, then extra individuals can take part in science and innovation.

“That’s the actual energy of visualization.”