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Vialab is led by Dr. Christopher Collins at Ontario Tech University.
In addition to this site, visit our Github for software and our Blog for approachable reports of our innovations.

Research Blog

  1. AI Meets the Piano: How LLMs Are Transforming Sight-Reading Practice

    by Fareeha Malik

    Learning to play the piano is a deeply rewarding journey, but it comes with a notoriously steep hurdle: sight-reading. Sight-reading is the ability to read and play a piece of sheet music fluently on the first look, much like reading a book out loud in your native language. While essential  ...Read More


More from our blog

  1. Guiding University Success: How AI and Smart Visuals Are Transforming Student Advising

    by Fareeha Malik

    Navigating university can be overwhelming. Between picking prerequisites, balancing demanding course loads, and adjusting to campus life, many students find themselves in academic jeopardy. While academic advisors play a crucial role in keeping students on track to graduate, their time is limited  ...Read More

  2. Making Every Letter Count: Abbreviating Text Labels on Demand

    by Fareeha Malik

    Have you ever tried to read a complex data visualization only to find the information buried under a mess of overlapping text or font so tiny you need a magnifying glass? Whether it’s a packed treemap or a busy map, fitting long words into small spaces is a classic headache in the world of data  ...Read More

  3. Can We Learn to Trust AI? The Essential Role of Interactive Visualization

    by Fareeha Malik

    As Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems increasingly influence critical decisions across healthcare, finance, policy, and everyday life, questions around trustworthiness, fairness, interpretability, and accountability have taken center stage. But how do humans actually come to trust these complex  ...Read More

  4. Before the Vision Pro: How a Retro Gaming Hack Previewed the Future of Brain Surgery

    by Fareeha Malik

    We’ve all seen medical dramas where doctors intently stare at a flat computer monitor, analyzing black-and-white brain scans before a high-stakes operation. Advanced 3D imaging techniques like Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Computed Tomography (CT) scans have become vital tools for clinical  ...Read More

  5. Bridging the Gap: How We’re Connecting Text Mining and Visualization

    by Fareeha Malik

    Have you ever wondered how scientists keep track of the thousands of research papers published every year? In fields like Visual Text Analytics, where experts use interactive charts to make sense of massive amounts of text data, the sheer volume of new ideas can be overwhelming. In our survey  ...Read More

  6. Professional Differences: How Disciplinary Training Affects Visualization Task Performance

    by Ethan Duggan

    Empowering people across all disciplines and professions to understand their data is the enduring promise of visualization. When designing a visualization for a specific industry or discipline, visualization designers will consider the nature of the data and how it is used by that specific disciplin  ...Read More

For more posts from our research blog, check out our Medium Page.

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