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Rafael Veras

Graduate Student — PhD

I’m currently pursuing my Doctoral degree in Computer Science. In my Master’s thesis work, I used NLP techniques to train the first empirical semantic model of passwords and demonstrated the model can be used to guess more passwords than the current approaches. I’m primarily interested in information visualization and human-computer interaction, in general. Other topics of interest include natural language processing and natural user interfaces.

I got my Bachelor’s degree from the Federal University of Pará, in Belém, the main city of the Brazilian Amazon region. While in my undergraduate program, I worked on several InfoVis projects and published a few papers. I also worked in a small software company as a programmer before starting my Master’s.

Currently, I am working on this project, whose goal is to find a better method for generating overviews of arbitrary hierarchical datasets. Its preliminary results were presented as a poster at Vis 2014. To some extent, this project fits into the theme of analytical guidance in visualization, which I am excited about.

Contact

If you would like to talk about my work or get connected, don’t hesitate in sending me an e-mail (rafael.verasguimaraes@ontariotechu.ca) or add me as a friend on LinkedIn or ResearchGate.

Publications

  • R. Veras and C. Collins, “Discriminability Tests for Visualization Effectiveness and Scalability,” IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (Proc. IEEE InfoVis), vol. 26, iss. 1, pp. 740-758, 2020.

    PDF

    @Article{ver2019c,
    author = {Rafael Veras and Christopher Collins},
    title = {Discriminability Tests for Visualization Effectiveness and Scalability},
    pages = {740–758},
    journal = {IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (Proc. IEEE InfoVis)},
    number = 1,
    volume = 26,
    doi = {10.1109/TVCG.2019.2934432},
    year = 2020
    }

  • R. Veras and C. Collins, “Saliency Deficit and Motion Outlier Detection in Animated Scatterplots,” in Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2019.

    PDF

    @InProceedings{ver2019b,
    author = {Rafael Veras and Christopher Collins},
    title = {Saliency Deficit and Motion Outlier Detection in Animated Scatterplots},
    doi = {10.1145/3290605.3300771},
    year = 2019,
    month = May,
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
    number = 541
    }

  • R. Veras, “Visual Encoding Quality and Scalability in Information Visualization,” PhD Thesis, 2019.

    PDF

    @PhdThesis{ver2019a,
    author = {Rafael Veras},
    title = {Visual Encoding Quality and Scalability in Information Visualization},
    school = {University of Ontario Institute of Technology},
    year = 2019
    }

  • R. Veras and C. Collins, “Optimizing Hierarchical Visualizations with the Minimum Description Length Principle,” IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, vol. 23, iss. 1, pp. 631-640, 2017

    PDF

    @Article{ver2017,
    Author = { Rafael Veras and Christopher Collins },
    Journal= {IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics },
    Title= {Optimizing Hierarchical Visualizations with the Minimum Description Length Principle},
    Year= {2017},
    Volume = { 23 },
    Number = { 1 },
    Pages= { 631–640},
    Keywords = { Hierarchy data, data aggregation, multiscale visualization, tree cut, antichain },
    DOI = { 10.1109/TVCG.2016.2598591 },
    ISSN = { 1077-2626 },
    Month = jan,
    }

  • S. Bonada, R. Veras, and C. Collins, “Personalized Views for Immersive Analytics,” in Proc. of the ACM ISS Workshop on Immersive Analytics, 2016.

    PDF

    @InProceedings{bon2016a,
    author = {Santiago Bonada and Rafael Veras and Christopher Collins},
    title = {Personalized Views for Immersive Analytics},
    booktitle = {Proc. of the ACM ISS Workshop on Immersive Analytics},
    series = {ISS},
    year = {2016},
    publisher = {ACM},
    doi = {10.1145/3009939.3009953}
    }

  • R. Veras, E. Paluka, M. Chang, V. Tsang, F. Shein, and C. Collins, “Interaction for Reading Comprehension on Mobile Devices,” in Proc. of the 16th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI ’14), 2014, pp. 157-161.

    PDF

    @InProceedings{ver2014c,
    author = {Rafael Veras and Erik Paluka and Meng-Wei Chang and Vivian Tsang and Fraser Shein and Christopher Collins},
    title = {Interaction for Reading Comprehension on Mobile Devices},
    booktitle = {Proc. of the 16th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI ’14)},
    series = {MobileHCI ’14},
    year = {2014},
    isbn = {978-1-4503-3004-6},
    location = {Toronto, ON, Canada},
    pages = {157 — 161},
    numpages = {5},
    doi = {10.1145/2628363.2628387},
    acmid = {2628387},
    publisher = {ACM},
    }

  • R. Veras, C. Collins, and J. Thorpe, “On Semantic Patterns of Passwords and their Security Impact,” in Proceedings of the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS’14), 2014.

    PDF

    @InProceedings{ver2014a,
    author = {Rafael Veras and Christopher Collins and Julie Thorpe},
    title = {On Semantic Patterns of Passwords and their Security Impact},
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS’14)},
    year = 2014
    }

  • R. Veras and C. Collins, “Prioritizing Nodes in Hierarchical Visualizations with the Tree Cut Model,” Proc. of IEEE Conf. on Information Visualization (InfoVis), 2014.

    PDF

    @poster{ver2014b,
    author = {Rafael Veras and Christopher Collins},
    title = {Prioritizing Nodes in Hierarchical Visualizations with the Tree Cut Model},
    booktitle = {Proc. of IEEE Conf. on Information Visualization (InfoVis)},
    address = {Paris, France},
    series = {Poster},
    year = 2014
    }

  • R. Veras, “An Investigation of Semantic Patterns in Passwords,” Master Thesis, 2013.

    PDF

    @MastersThesis{ver2013aa,
    author = {Rafael Veras},
    title = {An Investigation of Semantic Patterns in Passwords},
    school = {University of Ontario Institute of Technology},
    year = 2013
    }

  • R. Veras, J. Thorpe, and C. Collins, “Visualizing Semantics in Passwords: The Role of Dates,” in Proc. of the IEEE Symposium on Visualization for Cyber Security (VizSec), 2012, pp. 88-95.

    PDF

    @InProceedings{ver2012a,
    author = {Rafael Veras and Julie Thorpe and Christopher Collins},
    title = {Visualizing Semantics in Passwords: The Role of Dates},
    booktitle = {Proc. of the IEEE Symposium on Visualization for Cyber Security (VizSec)},
    year = 2012,
    pages = {88 — 95},
    doi = {10.1145/2379690.2379702}
    }

  • R. Veras, C. Collins, and J. Thorpe, “A Large-Scale Analysis of the Semantic Password Model and Linguistic Patterns in Passwords”, ACM Trans. Priv. Secur., vol 24, no 3, Apr 2021.

    PDF

    @article{ver2021a,
    author = {Veras, Rafael and Collins, Christopher and Thorpe, Julie},
    title = {A Large-Scale Analysis of the Semantic Password Model and Linguistic Patterns in Passwords},
    year = {2021},
    issue_date = {August 2021},
    publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
    address = {New York, NY, USA},
    volume = {24},
    number = {3},
    issn = {2471-2566},
    url = {/doi.org/10.1145/3448608},
    doi = {10.1145/3448608},
    journal = {ACM Trans. Priv. Secur.},
    month = apr,
    articleno = {20},
    numpages = {21},
    keywords = {Password guessing, PCFG, semantics, probabilistic context-free grammars}
    }

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