CS&E Colloquium: Qianwen Wang

This week's speaker, Qianwen Wang (Harvard University), will be giving a talk titled, "Interpreting and Steering AI Explanations with Interactive Visualizations".

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has advanced at a rapid pace and is expected to revolutionize many biomedical applications. However, current AI methods are usually developed via a data-centric approach regardless of the usage context and the end users, posing challenges for domain users in interpreting AI, obtaining actionable insights, and collaborating with AI in decision-making and knowledge discovery. 

As a visualization researcher, I aim to address this challenge by combining interactive visualizations with interpretable AI. In this talk, I discuss and demonstrate the prospects for interactive visual explanations in the application of biomedical AI via real-world case studies. I present two methodologies for achieving this goal: 1) visualizations that explain AI models and predictions and 2) interaction mechanisms that integrate user feedback into AI models. Despite some challenges, I will conclude on an optimistic note: interactive visual explanations should be indispensable for Human-AI collaboration in biomedical applications. The methodology discussed can be applied generally to other applications where human-AI collaborations are involved, assisting domain experts in data exploration and insight generation with the help of AI.

Biography

Qianwen Wang is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University. Her research strives to facilitate the communication and collaboration between users and AI through interactive visual tools, with a special interest in their applications in solving biomedical challenges.

Her research has made contributions to visualization, human-computer interaction, and bioinformatics, as demonstrated by 18 publications in top-tier venues (IEEE VIS, TVCG, ACM CHI, Bioinformatics, ISMB). She has received two best abstract awards from BioVis ISMB, one honorable mention from IEEE VIS, and one Best paper award from IMLH@ICML. She is an awardee of the HDSI Postdoctoral Research Fund. Her Research has been covered by MIT News and Nature Technology Features. She serves as the abstract chair for the ISMB BioVis COSI, the Poster Chair for PacificVis, and an organizer for Visualization in Biomedical AI workshop@IEEE VIS.