The IEEE Visualization Conference (VIS) is an annual conference on scientific visualization, information visualization, and visual analytics administrated by the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Visualization and Graphics. As ranked by Google Scholar's h-index metric in 2016, VIS is the highest rated venue for visualization research and the second-highest rated conference for computer graphics over all. It has an 'A' rating from the Australian Ranking of ICT Conferences, an 'A' rating from the Brazilian ministry of education, and an 'A' rating from the China Computer Federation (CCF). The conference is highly selective with generally < 25% acceptance rates for all papers.
An image dataset, VIS30K, has been created from figures and tables in the conference publications.
In 2016, the VIS Executive Committee initiated a review of conference structures, which led to community consultations and the formation of a committee in 2019, which successfully consolidated the three conferences (SciVis, InfoVis, VAST) under one conference at VIS 2021. Since the VIS 2021 conference a new unified full paper track with six specific areas and a consolidated review process is used. The unification of the conference structure aims to streamline experiences, simplify organizational processes, enhance flexibility in the evolution of topics, and provide a cohesive view of visualization fields.
Location The conference is typically held at the end of October. In 2014, for its 25th anniversary, the conference took place for the first time outside of the US, namely in Paris. Since then, the conference typically rotates around the US and also moves international about every third year.
List of conferences: 2027: Chicago, United States (planned) 2026: Boston, United States (planned) 2025: Vienna, Austria 2024: St. Pete Beach, Florida, United States (moved online due to Hurricane Milton) 2023: Melbourne, Australia 2022: Oklahoma City, United States (hybrid) 2021: New Orleans, United States (online) 2020: Salt Lake City, United States (online) 2019: Vancouver, Canada 2018: Berlin, Germany 2017: Phoenix, Arizona, United States 2016: Baltimore, Maryland, United States 2015: Chicago, Illinois, United States 2014: Paris, France 2013: Atlanta, Georgia, United States 2012: Seattle, Washington, United States 2011: Providence, Rhode Island, United States 2010: Salt Lake City, Utah, United States 2009: Atlantic City, New Jersey, United States 2008: Columbus, Ohio, United States 2007: Sacramento, California, United States 2006: Baltimore, Maryland, United States 2005: Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States 2004: Austin, Texas, United States 2003: Seattle, Washington, United States 2002: Boston, Massachusetts, United States 2001: San Diego, California, United States 2000: Salt Lake City, Utah, United States 1999: San Francisco, California, United States 1998: Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, United States 1997: Phoenix, Arizona, United States 1996: San Francisco, California, United States 1995: Atlanta, Georgia, United States 1994: Washington DC, United States 1993: San Jose, California, United States 1992: Boston, Massachusetts, United States 1991: San Diego, California, United States 1990: San Francisco, California, United States
Awards VIS Best Paper Award
2024: Entanglements for Visualization: Changing Research Outcomes through Feminist Theory: Derya Akbaba, Lauren Klein, Miriah Meyer Aardvark: Composite Visualizations of Trees, Time-Series, and Images: Devin Lange, Robert L Judson-Torres, Thomas A Zangle, Alexander Lex VisEval: A Benchmark for Data Visualization in the Era of Large Language Models: Nan Chen, Yuge Zhang, Jiahang Xu, Kan Ren, Yuqing Yang VADIS: A Visual Analytics Pipeline for Dynamic Document Representation and Information Seeking: Rui Qiu, Yamei Tu, Po-Yin Yen, Han-Wei Shen Rapid and Precise Topological Comparison with Merge Tree Neural Networks: Yu Qin, Brittany Terese Fasy, Carola Wenk, Brian Summa
2023: Affective Visualization Design: Leveraging the Emotional Impact of Data: Xingyu Lan, Yanqiu Wu, Nan Cao Fast Compressed Segmentation Volumes for Scientific Visualization: Max Piochowiak, Carsten Dachsbacher Swaying the Public? Impacts of Election Forecast Visualizations on Emotion, Trust, and Intention in the 2022 U.S. Midterms: Fumeng Yang, Mandi Cai, Chloe Rose Mortenson, Hoda Fakhari, Ayse Deniz Lokmanoglu, Jessica Hullman, Steven Franconeri, Nicholas Diakopoulos, Erik Nisbet, Matthew Kay TimeSplines: Sketch-based Authoring of Flexible and Idiosyncratic Timelines: Anna Offenwanger, Matthew Brehmer, Fanny Chevalier, Theophanis Tsandilas Visualization of Discontinuous Vector Field Topology: Egzon Miftari, Daniel Durstewitz, Filip Sadlo Vortex Lens: Interactive Vortex Core Line Extraction using Observed Line Integral Convolution: Peter Rautek, Xingdi Zhang, Bernhard Woschizka, Thomas Theussl, Markus Hadwiger
2022: Affective Learning Objectives for Communicative Visualizations: Elsie Lee-Robbins, Eytan Adar Multiple Forecast Visualizations (MFVs): Trade-offs in Trust and Performance in Multiple COVID-19 Forecast Visualizations: Lace Padilla, Racquel Fygenson, Spencer C. Castro, Enrico Bertini Uncertainty-Aware Multidimensional Scaling: David Hägele, Tim Krake, Daniel Weiskopf
2021: Feature Curves and Surfaces of 3D Asymmetric Tensor Fields: Shih-Hsuan Hung, Yue Zhang, Harry Yeh, Eugene Zhang IRVINE: Using Interactive Clustering and Labeling to Analyze Correlation Patterns: A Design Study from the Manufacturing of Electrical Engines: Joscha Eirich, Jakob Bonart, Dominik Jäckle, Michael Sedlmair, Ute Schmid, Kai Fischbach, Tobias Schreck, Jürgen Bernard Perception! Immersion! Empowerment! Superpowers as Inspiration for Visualization: Wesley Willett, Bon Adriel Aseniero, Sheelagh Carpendale, Pierre Dragicevic, Yvonne Jansen, Lora Oehlberg, Petra Isenberg Simultaneous Matrix Orderings for Graph Collections: Nathan van Beusekom, Wouter Meulemans, Bettina Speckmann
2020: VAST VATLD: A Visual Analytics System to Assess, Understand and Improve Traffic Light Detection: Liang Gou, Lincan Zou, Nanxiang Li, Michael Hofmann, Shekar Arvind Kumar, Axel Wendt, and Liu Ren InfoVis Visual Reasoning Strategies and Satisficing: How Uncertainty Visualization Design Impacts Effect Size Judgments and Decisions: Alex Kale, Matthew Kay, and Jessica Hullman SciVis Objective Observer-Relative Flow Visualization in Curved Spaces for Unsteady 2D Geophysical Flows: Peter Rautek, Matej Mlejnek, Johanna Beyer, Jakob Troidl, Hanspeter Pfister, Thomas Theussl, Markus Hadwiger
2019: VAST FlowSense: A Natural Language Interface for Visual Data Exploration within a Dataflow System: Bowen Yu, Claudio Silva InfoVis Data Changes Everything: Challenges and Opportunities in Data Visualization Design Handoff: Jagoda Walny, Christian Frisson, Mieka West, Doris Kosminsky, Søren Knudsen, Sheelagh Carpendale, Wesley Willett SciVis InSituNet: Deep Image Synthesis for Parameter Space Exploration of Ensemble Simulations: Wenbin He, Junpeng Wang, Hanqi Guo, Ko-Chih Wang, Han-Wei Shen, Mukund Raj, Youssef S. G. Nashed, Tom Peterka
2018: VAST TPFlow: Progressive Partition and Multidimensional Pattern Extraction for Large-Scale Spatio-Temporal Data Analysis, Dongyu Liu, Panpan Xu, Liu Ren InfoVis Formalizing Visualization Design Knowledge as Constraints: Actionable and Extensible Models in Draco, Dominik Moritz, Chenglong Wang, Greg L. Nelson, Halden Lin, Adam M. Smith, Bill Howe, Jeffrey Heer SciVis Deadeye: A Novel Preattentive Visualization Technique Based on Dichoptic Presentation Authors: Andrey Krekhov, Jens Krüger
2017: VAST Visualizing Dataflow Graphs of Deep Learning Models in TensorFlow, Kanit Wongsuphasawat, Daniel Smilkov, James Wexler, Jimbo Wilson, Dandelion Mané, Doug Fritz, Dilip Krishnan, Fernanda B. Viégas, and Martin Wattenberg InfoVis Modeling Color Difference for Visualization Design, Danielle Albers Szafir SciVis Globe Browsing: Contextualized Spatio-Temporal Planetary Surface Visualization, Karl Bladin, Emil Axelsson, Erik Broberg, Carter Emmart, Patric Ljung, Alexander Bock, and Anders Ynnerman
2016: VAST An Analysis of Machine- and Human-Analytics in Classification, Gary K.L. Tam, Vivek Kothari, Min Chen InfoVis Vega-Lite: A Grammar of Interactive Graphics, Arvind Satyanarayan, Dominik Moritz, Kanit Wongsuphasawat, and Jeffrey Heer SciVis Jacobi Fiber Surfaces for Bivariate Reeb Space Computation, Julien Tierny and Hamish Carr
2015 VAST Reducing Snapshots to Points: A Visual Analytics Approach to Dynamic Network Exploration, Stef van den Elzen, Danny Holten, Jorik Blaas, Jarke van Wijk InfoVis HOLA: Human-like Orthogonal Network Layout, Steve Kieffer, Tim Dwyer, Kim Marriott, Michael Wybrow SciVis Visualization-by-Sketching: An Artist’s Interface for Creating Multivariate Time-Varying Data, David Schroeder, Daniel Keefe
2014 VAST Supporting Communication and Coordination in Collaborative Sensemaking, Narges Mahyar, Melanie Tory InfoVis Multivariate Network Exploration and Presentation: From Detail to Overview via Selections and Aggregations, Stef van den Elzen, Jarke van Wijk SciVis Visualization of Brain Microstructure through Spherical Harmonics Illumination of High Fidelity Spatio-Angular Fields, Sujal Bista, Jiachen Zhou, Rao Gullapalli, Amitabh Varshney
2013 VAST A Partition-Based Framework for Building and Validating Regression Models, Thomas Muhlbacher, Harald Piringer InfoVis LineUp: Visual Analysis of Multi-Attribute Rankings, Samuel Gratzl, Alexander Lex, Nils Gehlenborg, Hanspeter Pfister, Marc Streit SciVis Comparative Visual Analysis of Lagrangian Transport in CFD Ensembles, Mathias Hummel, Harald Obermaier, Christoph Garth, Kenneth I. Joy
Technical Achievement Award
Past recipients: 2024 - Bongshin Lee, Han-Wei Shen 2023 - Huamin Qu, Silvia Miksch 2022 - Valerio Pascucci, Shixia Liu 2021 - Daniel Weiskopf 2020 - Jean-Daniel Fekete 2019 - Eduard Gröller 2018 - Anders Ynnerman 2017 - Jeffrey Heer 2016 - David Ebert 2015 - Tamara Munzner 2014 - Claudio T. Silva 2013 - Kwan-Liu Ma 2012 - John Stasko 2011 - Daniel A. Keim 2010 - Hanspeter Pfister 2009 - Jock D. Mackinlay 2008 - David Laidlaw 2007 - Jarke van Wijk 2006 - Thomas Ertl 2005 - Charles D. Hansen 2004 - Amitabh Varshney
Career Award To earn the IEEE VGTC Visualization Career Award, an individual must demonstrate that their research and service has had broad impacts on the field over a long period of time. Since 2021 it is called Lifetime Achievement.
Past recipients: 2024 - Hans-Christian Hege and Min Chen 2023 - John Stasko 2022 - Colin Ware 2021 - Jarke van Wijk 2020 - Catherine Plaisant 2019 - Thomas Ertl 2018 - Sheelagh Carpendale 2017 - Charles D. Hansen 2016 - John C. Dill 2015 - Markus Gross 2014 - Kenneth Joy 2013 - Gregory M. Nielson 2012 - Ben Shneiderman 2011 - Frits Post 2010 - Christopher R. Johnson 2009 - Hans Hagen 2008 - Lawrence J. Rosenblum 2007 - Stuart Card 2006 - Pat Hanrahan 2005 - Arie Kaufman 2004 - Bill Lorensen
References