Wenwen Dou

Presonal Webpages: http://webpages.charlotte.edu/wdou1/ Degree Institution: University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Degree: Ph.D.
Education: Computer Science

I’m Wenwen Dou, currently a research assistant professor at the Charlotte Visualization Center.
I work in the cutting-edge research area of Visual Text Analytics, which integrates statstical and machine learning methods with powerful interactive visualization for analyzing large amounts of textual data.

Two main threads of my work include social media analysis and science impact analysis. Social media analysis aims to extract insights from massive social media data. The image shown above illustrates an example of what one could find through such analysis. Specifically, the image shows the visual results of the year-long Occupy movement in both temporal and geospatial dimensions. More importantly, critical events throughout the movement could be detected through analyzing Twitter streams. Analysis of the rise and fall of the movement could shed light on the organization of the movement, major players involved, as well as the effect of public policies pertaining the movement.

In addition to social media analysis, I am also interested in science impact analysis. Accessing the impact of science policy is a challenging but critical problem. Developing an understanding of the impacts on future research trends and workforces will enable the policy makers to make more informed decisions. To this aim, we have been analyzing NSF awarded research abstracts together with full-text publications from selected research fields, in order to study the impact of federal funding on research topics and trends.

Research Areas: Visual Analytics, Visualization