Catherine Plaisant facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Catherine Plaisant
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Catherine Plaisant in 2020
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| Born | May 26, 1957 |
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| Fields | Human–computer interaction, information visualization |
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Catherine Plaisant is a French-American research scientist. She is now a Research Scientist Emerita at the University of Maryland, College Park. She also helped lead the University of Maryland Human–Computer Interaction Lab.
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Education and Learning
Catherine Plaisant studied in France. She earned her Ph.D., which is a very high university degree, in industrial engineering. She got this degree from Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris.
She also received a special engineering degree called a Diplôme d'Ingénieur. She earned this from Arts et Métiers ParisTech, which is one of France's top engineering schools.
Important Research Work
After working for five years in Paris, Catherine Plaisant joined the University of Maryland Human–Computer Interaction Lab. There, she worked with another famous scientist, Ben Shneiderman.
Human-Computer Interaction
Catherine Plaisant is well-known for her work in human–computer interaction. This field studies how people use and interact with computers. She also worked on information visualization, which is about showing data in clear and helpful ways.
She helped create some of the first touchscreen interfaces. For example, her work was used in a legal case about the "slide to unlock" feature on phones. This case mentioned a video she made in 1991 that showed a touchscreen slider.
Data Visualization Tools
Plaisant also helped develop tools like Treemap. Treemap is a way to show large amounts of data using nested rectangles. She also worked on Lifelines, which helps visualize personal records, like a patient's medical history.
Her other work includes tools for visual analytics. These tools help people find patterns in large sets of information. Projects like LifeLines2 and EventFlow help experts find trends in patient records, student information, or customer data.
Awards and Recognition
In 2015, Catherine Plaisant was chosen for the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) CHI Academy. This honor is given to people who have made big contributions to the field of human-computer interaction. Her work has been mentioned by other researchers over 32,000 times.
In 2018, Dr. Plaisant received an International Chair from INRIA. This award allows important international researchers to work with INRIA's project teams. Her project, from 2018 to 2022, focused on "Visual Analytics for Exploratory Data Analysis."
In 2020, she received the SIGCHI Lifetime Service Award from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). This award recognizes her many years of service and contributions to the field.
Later in 2020, the IEEE Computer Society gave her the 2020 Visualization Career Award. She received this award for her wide range of work in data visualization. This included her efforts in evaluating tools, creating benchmarks, and her specific focus on visualizing event sequences.
Books She Wrote
Catherine Plaisant co-authored a book called Designing the User Interface with Ben Shneiderman. This book helps people learn how to create computer interfaces that are easy and helpful for users. It has been published in several editions.
