John Alexis Guerra Gómez

About me

I'm a research scientist working on creating rich and interactive information visualizations that let users analyze their own data. Previously I worked at Yahoo Labs were I researched information visualization interfaces for analysis of complex social datasets, specially for representing, navigating and exploring photos. Before that, I spent 1.5 years at PARC working on visual analytics of social media and Fraud, Waste and Abuse. I completed my PhD from the Computer Science at the University of Maryland at College Park thanks to the international Fulbright Science and Technology Scholarship under the supervision of Dr. Ben Shneiderman and Dr. Catherine Plaisant. Researcher and teacher by profession, and social entrepreneur by heart. My research interests are in Information Visualization, Usability and Accessibility, Social Networks and Human Computer Interaction, specially in the development of technologies with a social purpose and the free software. Because of this I helped founding DUTO, a company where I lead the development of the software component of IRIS, a system that allows blind students to see with their hands the colors and shapes of the pedagogical materials given in a traditional classroom.

In My PhD thesis I'm using Information Visualization and Algorithmic techniques to help analysts find significant changes in hierarchical datasets over time, both in node values and in structure. For this, I designed and implemented two software prototypes of TreeVersity, a tree comparison tool that uses intuitive glyphs, with carefully selected colors, algorithms and reporting tools to allow the exploration of differences over time in trees. TreeVersity v1 was implemented using Java and the Prefuse Visualization Library and allow the comparison of two tree structures. while TreeVersity v2 allowed the comparison of one tree evolving over time. TreeVersity v2 was designed for the web using a combination of Javascript, D3, HTML+CSS, Python with a PostgreSQL database.

I have very good skills in software development, with formation and experience in Software Engineering, Database Design and Systems Administration. I'm also a proficient developer with tangible experience in Javascript, Python, Java, Ruby and C/C++ both for desktop and web applications, administration of GNU/Linux servers and of PostgreSQL and MySQL databases. I have also worked with several other programming languages and paradigms (Imperative, Functional, Logical) and have the ability of learning new languages in short periods of time. Having led small teams of development, I have developed solid leadership skills and from being DUTO's official presenter I cultivated strong communication skills.

Short CV

Selected Publications

• 2016 Frank Bentley, Joseph ‘Jofish’ Kaye, David A. Shamma, John Alexis Guerra Gómez, "The 32 Days Of Christmas: Understanding Temporal Intent in Image Search Queries ". CHI 2016: ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems [To Appear]
• 2016 Sanjay Kairam, Jofish Kaye, John Alexis Guerra Gómez, David Ayman Shamma, "Snap Decisions? How Users, Content, and Aesthetics Interact to Shape Photo Sharing Behaviors". CHI 2016: ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems [To Appear]
• 2015 John Alexis Guerra Gómez, Michael L. Pack, Catherine Plaisant, Ben Shneiderman, Discovering temporal changes in hierarchical transportation data: Visual analytics & text reporting tools", Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies, Volume 51, February 2015, Pages 167-179, ISSN 0968-090X, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.trc.2014.11.007.
• 2014 Juan Liu, Eric Bier, Aaron Wilson, Tomo Honda, Sricharan Kumar, Leilani Gilpin, John Guerra-Gomez, Daniel Davies, Graph Analysis for Detecting Fraud,Waste, and Abuse in Healthcare Data. Twenty-Seventh IAAI Conference. AAAI Publications
• 2013 John Alexis Guerra Gómez, Michael L. Pack, Catherine Plaisant, Ben Shneiderman, B. Visualizing Change over Time Using Dynamic Hierarchies: TreeVersity2 and the StemView. IEEE transactions on visualization and computer graphics, 19(12), 2566–75. doi:10.1109/TVCG.2013.231 Preprint PDF
• 2013 John Alexis Guerra Gómez. Exploring differences in multivariate datasets using hierarchies, An interactive information visualization Approach. PhD Thesis. Computer Science Deparment. University Maryland at College Park. UMD Link | HCIL Link
• 2013 John Alexis Guerra Gómez, Audra Buck-Coleman, Catherine Plaisant, Ben Shneiderman. TreeVersity: Interactive Visualizations for Comparing Hierarchical Datasets". In Proceedings of the Transportation Research Board 92th annual meeting, The National Academies, Washington, DC (2013). Honored with the 2013 Greg Herrington Award for Excellence in Visualization Research from the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies of Sciences Transportation Research Board (TRB).
• 2012 John Alexis Guerra Gómez, Audra Buck-Coleman, Catherine Plaisant, Ben Shneiderman. "TreeVersity: Visualizing Hierarchical Data for Value with Topology Changes", Design Research Society Conference Bangkok 2012.
• 2011 Krist Wongsuphasawat, John Alexis Guerra Gómez, Catherine Plaisant, Taowei David Wang, Meirav Taieb Maimon and Ben Shneiderman. “LifeFlow: Visualizing an Overview of Event Sequences”. In Proceedings of the 2011 Annual Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'11), 1747-1756.

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