Aritra Dasgupta

Assistant Professor
Department of Data Science
Director, M.S. Data Science       

New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT)    aritra.dasgupta@njit.edu

Director, NiiV lab
niiv.njitvis.com

Previous:
Senior Research Scientist at
Pacific Northwest National Lab (2015-2018)

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I am one of the founding faculty members of the newly minted Department of Data Science at NJIT and I direct the M.S. Data Science program.

I will be recruiting 1-2 new PhD students in Spring/Fall 2024 working on human-centered data science topics funded by NSF and DOE.
Please apply here.

My research interests lie at the intersection of information visualization and human-centered data science. I use visualization as a communication medium between data-driven computational models and human reasoning about information.

I direct NJIT’s Intelligible Information Visualization Lab (NiiV), where we pursue intelligibility as the foundational principle for making information more accessible, meaningful, and actionable to experts (e.g., doctors, climate scientists) and non-experts alike.

Grant Funding (* indicates active funding) 

*September 2023-Aug 2027, PI
National Science Foundation (Future of Work), $460K
Trapeze: Responsible AI-assisted Talent Acquisition for HR Specialists

Collaborators: Prof. Julia Stoyanovich (NYU), Prof. Fred Oswald (Rice), 
& Prof. Ann Marie Ryan  (Michigan State)

*September 2023-Aug 2027, PI
National Science Foundation (Core Program, III) $400K
Responsible Design and Validation of Algorithmic Rankers

Collaborators: Prof. Julia Stoyanovich (NYU) & Prof. H.V. Jagadish (Umich)

*October 2023-Sep 2026, PI
Department of Energy (CESER) $450K,
(PROTECT) Proactive Human-Machine Teaming Enabled Cybersecure Technologies"
Collaborators: Dr. Soumya Kundu and Dr. Seemita Pal (PNNL)

*June 2023-Sep 2024, PI
Department of Energy (HELM), $70K,
Interactive Visual Analytics for Explainable AI/ML in Grid Sensing

Collaborators: Dr. Soumya Kundu (PNNL)

*Sep 2022-May 2024, PI
Department of Energy (RDPP), $145K,
A Scientist-in-the-Loop Data Analytics Framework for Intelligent Simulation Model Tuning and Validation 

Collaborators: Prof. Chase Wu (Co-PI, NJIT)

Sep 2021-June 2022 PI, NJIT Seed Grant, $7.5K, Analyzing Communicative Visualizations 

April 2020- June 2020 PI, Hearst Media, $23K Data Visualization Education 

Oct 2019-Sep 2023 Co-PI, NSF Future of Work, $849K (responsible for $220K) Augmenting Social Media Content Moderation 

Previous: (at PNNL)
October 2016-October 2018 PI, Department of Energy-Lab Directed Research and Development, $329K,Data-Driven Reasoning for Climate Model Predictions

October 2015-April 2018 PI, Department of Energy-Lab Directed Research and Development, $662K, Transpire: Transparent Model-Driven DIscovery of Streaming Patterns  

 

Research Themes

Visualization+Explainable AI for Algorithmic Rankers
Design and evaluate explanation methods and interactive visualization techniques for probing score-based and learned algorithmic rankers.
[VisualComputer23]   [HILDA23]   [Nature23]  

ML Model Explainability and Human-Machine Interaction
Provide domain experts and model developers with tools that explain the decisions of machine learning models and help them semantically validate models.
[HILDA17]    [VAST17]   [UIST18]  [TREX20]  [TREX21]  [VIS21]

Privacy-Aware Data Discovery
Adapt visualizations to prevent disclosure of sensitive information by developing information loss metrics that can help address the trade-off between privacy gain and loss of utility due to anonymization.
[InfoVis11]   [CGF12]   [CGF13]   [EHRVis14]   [VizSec19] [CGF20]

Visualization for Simulation Model Comparison
Let domain scientists reason about computational model behavior and help them select the most accurate models by interactively comparing multiple facets of model performance. 
[EuroVis14]   [TVCG14]   [CISE15]   [TVCG20]  

User Studies on Trust, Preference, & Familiarity
Conduct user studies with experts from biology and climate science domains to evaluate if and how optimal visualization design can overcome potential biases due to familiarity.
[TVCG17]   [CHI17]   [Chapter 6,Cognitive Biases Book 18]   [TVCG20]

Visualization Perception & Design Analysis
Study and survey of the visualization design space for devising classification schemes that bridge human perception with visual encodings.
[TVCG15]   [CGF17]   [CGF18]   [VisComm18[VIS20

Optimizing Pattern Search in High-Dimensional Data Spaces
Provide guidance to analysts for finding patterns in high-dimensional subspaces by devising metrics that quantify salient patterns.
[InfoVis10]   [LDAV12]   [CGF2015]   [LDAV2016]

 

Ph.D. Students

Jun Yuan 2021- 2024 (expected)

Kaustav Bhattacharjee 2019- 2024 (expected)

Vrushali Koli 2022- 2026 (expected)

Research Assistants

Sravya Aare (MS DS), Tejaswini Rao (MS DS), Aravind Krishnan (MS DS),
Manikanta Rayala (MS CS)

 

Previous research assistants:
M.S. Data Science

Parvathy Neelkanta Sharma, Sasikala Vasudevan, Likhitha Musku Divya Chandana, Yaohua Zhao                          

B.S. IT/CS
Gabriel Aquende, Tanvirul Islam                         
Parth Merchant