Hello! I am Yalong Yang.

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech. I was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Visual Computing Group at Harvard University with Prof. Hanspeter Pfister. Before joining Harvard, I received my Ph.D. from Human-Centred Computing Department, Monash University, Australia. My primary and secondary supervisors were Prof. Tim Dwyer and Prof. Kim Marriott. My thesis is available at "Visualising Geographically-Embedded Origin-Destination Flows: in 2D and immersive environments".


My research concerns many different aspects of Visualization (VIS), VR/AR, and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). I am an active member in those communities, with regular publications at their premier venues like IEEE VIS, ACM CHI, IEEE TVCG, EuroVis, and received three best paper honorable mention awards: IEEE VIS 2016/22 and ACM CHI 2021.


I also serve as a Program Committee member for IEEE VIS 2022, ACM CHI 2023, and IEEE VR 2022/23.

About Virginia Tech
From the Princeton Review: "Virginia Tech is a school with a reputation as big as its campus. Known for its beautiful campus, amazing community feel, top-notch engineering field."

Virginia Tech offers an exceptional academic environment for VIS/VR/AR/HCI. In VT CS, you will have the opportunity to collaborate with researchers from interdisciplinary research centers and institutes, e.g., the Center for Human-Computer Interaction (CHCI) and the Sanghani Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics.

VT CS is expanding rapidly: with many new faculty hires in recent years (potentially more in the future) and two brand-new buildings in its Blacksburg campus: the Gilbert Street Building and the Data and Decision Sciences Building. The Gilbert Street Building will be ready in 2023 Spring!

Contact me if you are interested in working with me. Having experience or being familiar with Unity3D/d3js/WebXR or similar tools is a plus.
News

Now

Suppose to be up-to-date ...

Jan

Our paper about asymetric collavorative visual analytics has been accepted at IEEE VR! Congrats, Wai Tong, as a succeful outcome from your last summer with us!

Jan

Our paper about how different levels of embodiment can affect network visualization navigation experience has been accepted at InfoVis Journal! Congrats, Helen, as a succeful outcome from your undergraduate thesis with me!

2023

Nov

Our paper about working with sports experts in visualization research has been accepted at IEEE CG&A! My first official last-author paper!

Oct

Three of my co-authored papers will be presented at IEEE VIS, including 1) embedded visualization for basketball watching (Honorable Mention), 2) AR label placement, and 3) VIS teaching method. See you all @ OKC!

Oct

Wai Tong has completed his visit with us. We wish him all the best and every sucess in his future research!

August

Our paper about embedded visualization for basketball watching received an Honorable Mention Award at VIS 2022.

August

Our Immersive Analytics special issue is offically accepting submissions at Frontiers in Virtual Reality.

August

Our Immersive Analytics workshop is accepted at ACM ISS 2022.

July

Our paper about embedded visualization for basketball watching is accepted by VIS 2022. A work led by Tica Lin.

July

Invited to serve on the Program Committee for IEEE VR 2023.

June

Welcome Wai Tong from HKUST VisLab! He will be a visiting scholar with our lab until October.

June

Invited to serve as an Associate Chair (AC) for CHI 2023.

May

Organizing an informal VIS meetup @ CHI 2022. Twitter link.

May

Traveling to New Orleans to attend CHI 2022 and present our paper on interactive matrix visualizations.

May

Invited to be one of the three moderators for the Immersive Analytics Workshop @ CHI 2022.

April

Zezhong Wang is giving a guest lecture about Data Comics for Data-Driven Storytelling in my InfoVis class.

March

Invited to serve on the Program Committee for IEEE VIS 2022 Short Papers.

March

Yixuan (Janice) Zhang is giving a guest lecture about Trust, Visualization, and COVID-19 in my InfoVis class.

February

Invited to serve on the Program Committee for IEEE VIS 2022.

January

Invited to give a talk about Immersive Analytics @ China Computer Federation (CCF, the leading organization on computing technology and applications in China). Link.

2022

December

Our paper about AR labels is accpeted by IEEE TVCG!

November

Attending the PhD in Technical HCI office hours as a panelist, organized by Prof. Michael Nebeling. Super fun!

October

Chairing the Immersive Environments, Personal Vis, and Dashboards paper session @ IEEE VIS 2021!

October

Invited to serve on the Program Committee for IEEE VR 2022.

October

Giving a guest lecture about Visualization Design and Evaluation @ Waterloo University, invited by Prof. Jian Zhao.

September

Giving a research seminar about Visualization Design and Evaluation @ Sichuan University, invited by Prof. Min Zhu.

August

Starting as a tenure-track assistant professor at Virginia Tech Computer Science!

July

Invited to give a talk on Immersive Visualization Design and Evaluation @ ChinaVIS 2021.

July

Invited to give a research seminar on Visualization Design and Evaluation: on Flat Screens, in VR/AR and More as one of the ten international speakers @ Zhejiang University.

June

Invited to serve on the Program Committee for Data Vis Activities @ IEEE VIS 2021.

May

Received a Certificate of Distinction in Teaching from Harvard University.

May

New family member! Teddy!

APRIL

Invited to serve on the Program Committee for IEEE VIS 2021 Short Papers.

March

Our project of using AR for basketball free-throw training led by Tica Lin has received an Honorable Mention Award at CHI 2021.

February

Two papers accepted by CHI 2021: (1) using AR for basketball free-throw training and (2) discussing the grand challenges in immersive analytics.

2021

How to rotate a map?