HKUST Visualization and Artificial Intelligence Lab

The VisAI Lab studies at the intersection of visualization and artificial intelligence, with special emphasis on biomedical applications.

Research Themes

Data Visualization
Interactive visualization for complex data analysis and discovery
Human–AI Collaboration
Effective teamwork between AI and human, such as scientists and clinicians
Explainable AI (XAI)
Interactive visualizations for interpreting, inspecting, and reasoning about AI models
Biomedical Applications
Visualization and AI for biomedical science, education, and healthcare
Automatic Synthesis of Visualization Design Knowledge Bases
Hyeok Kim, Sehi L'Yi, Nils Gehlenborg, Jeffrey Heer
In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’26) (2026)
25.3% acceptance rate
Learnable and Expressive Visualization Authoring Through Blended Interfaces
Sehi L'Yi, Astrid van den Brandt, Etowah Adams, Huyen N. Nguyen, Nils Gehlenborg
IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG) (Proc. VIS) (2025)
23.2% acceptance rate
Best Paper Honorable Mention
Chromoscope: interactive multiscale visualization for structural variation in human genomes
Sehi L'Yi, Dominika Maziec, Victoria Stevens, Trevor Manz, Alexander Veit, Michele Berselli, Peter J Park, Dominik Głodzik, Nils Gehlenborg
Nature Methods (2023) 20, 1834–1835
Innovation In Cancer Informatics Major Grant Award 2023
GenoREC: A Recommendation System for Interactive Genomics Data Visualization
Aditeya Pandey**, Sehi L'Yi, Qianwen Wang, Michelle A Borkin, Nils Gehlenborg
IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG) (Proc. VIS) (2023) 29(1), 570-580
26.5% acceptance rate
IEEE InfoVis Best Poster Research Award
Gosling: A Grammar-based Toolkit for Scalable and Interactive Genomics Data Visualization
Sehi L'Yi, Qianwen Wang, Fritz Lekschas, Nils Gehlenborg
IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG) (Proc. VIS) (2022) 28(1), 40-150
25.8% acceptance rate
ISMB/ECCB BioVis Best Abstract Award