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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. Beyond the Static Page: A New Framework for Interactive Conference Posters

    by Fareeha Malik

    Poster sessions are a staple of academic conferences, offering a fantastic space to share research and spark informal conversations. However, standard printed posters have some major limitations: they aren’t very memorable, they can’t be easily saved for later, and their charts are stuck in a  ...Read More

  2. Visualizing Language Transfer Effects in Large Learner Corpora

    by Ethan Duggan

    Second Language Acquisition (SLA) is a research field that studies the process of learning another language. Language transfer effects occur when the learner applies structural, grammatical, or semantic rules from their native language to the language they are trying to learn. For example, a native  ...Read More

  3. Beyond Menu Hopping: How “Magic Pen” Automatically Detects Your Pen Mode

    by Fareeha Malik

    When reading, grading, or editing a document with a digital stylus, your workflow can be interrupted by a frustrating problem: having to stop, move your hand across the screen, and select a toolbar option just to switch between writing notes, highlighting keywords, or underlining text. In  ...Read More

  4. Visualizing the Journey: Mapping Literature with GeoMapper

    by Fareeha Malik

    Readers often find themselves lost in the sprawling geography of a great novel. While authors use real-world locations to set the scene, following a story that jumps between cities or across continents can be a challenge for even the most attentive reader. As Franco Moretti discusses in his work  ...Read More

  5. How to Evaluate Guidance in Visual Analytics: A Dual Perspective

    by Fareeha Malik

    Visual Analytics pairs human reasoning with computational power to explore massive, complex datasets. Yet, because communication between people and software is rarely seamless, users often spend valuable time in frustrating trial-and-error analysis loops. To bridge these knowledge gaps, modern  ...Read More

  6. Digital Time Capsules: Exploring Geolocated Media Sharing

    by Fareeha Malik

    We rarely think about past experiences until we actively scroll back through our phone galleries or physical photo albums. But what if your surroundings could remind you of those moments automatically? Inspired by real-world treasure hunting in Geocaching and the historical photo overlays of Replay  ...Read More

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

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