Salvador Medina
PhD Student (ML + Animation)
I research how to enable machine learning interpretability at scale and for everyone, by designing and developing interactive interfaces to help people confidently understand data-driven systems. Besides building tools, I also create data visualizations and write interactive articles to simply communicate complex ideas.
I have collaborated with researchers, designers, developers, and artists while working at Apple, Microsoft Research, NASA Jet Propulsion Lab, and Pacific Northwest National Lab.
Education
Dec. 2020 — Aug. 2015
Ph.D. in Computational Science & Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA
Advisor:
Duen Horng (Polo) Chau, Co-advisor:
Alex Endert
Committee:
Duen Horng (Polo) Chau,
Alex Endert,
Chao Zhang,
Nathan Hodas,
Scott Davidoff,
Steven Drucker
May 2018
M.S. in Computational Science & Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA
GPA: 4.00/4.00
May 2015 — Aug. 2011
B.S. in Mathematics, B.S. in Physics
University of Georgia, Athens, GA
Overall GPA: 3.84/4.00, Magna Cum Laude, Area of Emphasis in Applied Mathematics
Industry Research Experience
Present — Jan. 2021
Apple, Seattle, WA
Research Scientist, Design + Visualization Group
Research and design for everyone in the machine learning process—the developers who build models, the designers who create experiences, and the people who use technology.
Summer 2019
Apple, Seattle, WA
Research Intern, Turi Human-centered Machine Learning Group
Mentor:
Kanit Wongsuphasawat,
Kayur Patel
Designed and developed interactive visualizations for data iteration in machine learning, published at CHI 2020.
Summer 2018
Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA
Research Intern, Human-Computer Interaction Group
Mentor:
Steven Drucker
Designed, developed, and deployed interactive interface for operationalizing machine learning interpretability, published at CHI 2019.
Summer 2017
NASA Jet Propulsion Lab, Pasadena, CA
Creative Computer Scientist, Human Interfaces Group
Mentor:
Scott Davidoff,
Arun Viswanathan
Joint work between NASA JPL, Caltech, and Art Center creating interactive data visualizations for current scientific research. Prototype presented to lab leadership and secured funding to be incorporated into Mars 2020 mission.
Summer 2016
Pacific Northwest National Lab, Richland, WA
National Security Ph.D. Intern, Data Sciences & Analytics Group
Mentor:
Nathan Hodas
Built interactive tools that generate synthetic images to explain deep learning classifiers, published at CHI 2017.
Academic Research Experience
Present — Aug. 2016
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA
Graduate Research Assistant, School of Computational Science and Engineering
Advisor:
Duen Horng (Polo) Chau,
Alex Endert
Member of the Polo Club of Data Science where we bridge and innovate at the intersection of data mining and human-computer interaction to synthesize scalable, interactive, and interpretable tools that amplify human’s ability to understand and interact with big data.
May 2016 — Aug. 2015
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA
Graduate Research Assistant, School of Computational Science and Engineering
Mentor:
Surya Kalidindi
Conducted research in physical data science and material informatics by creating property-structure linkages using machine learning to predict material properties. Contributed to direction and code of PyMKS: Materials Knowledge Systems in Python.
May 2015 — Jan. 2013
University of Georgia, Athens, GA
Undergraduate Research Assistant, Department of Mathematics
Advisor:
David Gay
Explored 3D printing and mathematical exposition in topology. Programmed, designed, and 3D printed 34-piece, color-coordinated, and magnetized 3D puzzle of the trefoil knot fibration. Led 3D printing research and education in mathematics department.
Summer 2014
REU in Mathematics and Computational Science, Fairfield, CT
Fairfield University, Department of Mathematics
Mentor:
Shanon Reckinger
Directly compared numerical solutions from Navier-Stokes equations to designed lab-scale experiments to model specific ocean phoneme. Configured MIT General Circulation Model on CPU cluster to run parallel computational fluid dynamics simulations.
Honors and Awards
2019
Best Paper at ACM CHI Conference
For "Managing Messes in Computational Notebooks"
2018
Best Paper, Honorable Mention at VISxAI Workshop at IEEE VIS
For "The Beginner's Guide to Dimensionality Reduction"
2018 — 2021
NASA Space Technology Research Fellowship
For my Ph.D. work on "Understanding Deep Neural Networks Through Attribution and Interactive Experimentation"
2018
Audience Appreciation Award, Runner Up at ACM SIGKDD Conference
For "Shield: Fast, Practical Defense and Vaccination for Deep Learning using JPEG Compression"
2017 — 2018
Microsoft Azure for Research Award: AI for Earth
For our work on "Deep Learning for Fine-scale Population Maps"
2017
Best Demo, Honorable Mention at ACM SIGMOD/PODS Conference
For "Visual Graph Query Construction and Refinement"
2015 — 2019
President's Fellowship at Georgia Institute of Technology
Select number of 1st year doctoral students who bring exemplary levels of scholarship and innovation to their academic departments
2015
Outstanding Poster at JMM Undergraduate Poster Session in Computational Math
For "Experimental and Numerical Comparison of Oceanic Overflow"
2015
UGA CURO Research Graduation Distinction
Awarded to undergraduates who write a thesis, present at the CURO Symposium, and complete 9 research credit hours
2014
UGA CURO Research Assistantship
Stipend awarded to outstanding undergraduates that actively participate in faculty-mentored research
2011 — 2015
Dean's List
Achieved at least a 3.5 GPA during a semester with minimum 14 credit hours
2011 — 2015
Georgia HOPE Scholarship
Merit-based award to Georgia residents providing tuition assistance for their undergraduate degree
2011
Mission of Blessed Trinity: Artistic Sensibility
One of two students to receive the Mission Statement award upon high-school graduation
Publications
Selected: Latest & Greatest
Salvador Medina,
Denis Tome,
Carsten Stoll,
Mark Tiede,
Kevin Munhall,
Alex Hauptmann,
Iain Matthews
IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR). New Orleans, LA, USA, 2022.
Journal
Conference
C1
Salvador Medina,
Denis Tome,
Carsten Stoll,
Mark Tiede,
Kevin Munhall,
Alex Hauptmann,
Iain Matthews
IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR). New Orleans, LA, USA, 2022.
Workshop
Poster
Demo
Miscellaneous
Talks
Interactive Scalable Interfaces for Machine Learning Interpretability
Nov. 2021
Carnegie Mellon University, Data Visualization Course Guest Lecture
Oct. 2020
University of Wisconsin-Madison, Data Visualization Course Guest Lecture
Oct. 2020
Georgia Tech Thesis Defense
May 2020
IBM Research
Apr. 2020
Microsoft Research
Apr. 2020
Apple
Apr. 2020
Autodesk Research
Dec. 2019
Georgia Tech Thesis Proposal
Summit: Scaling Deep Learning Interpretability by Visualizing Activation and Attribution Summarizations
Mar. 2020
NVIDIA GTC
Oct. 2019
IEEE Visualization
TeleGam: Combining Visualization and Verbalization for Interpretable Machine Learning
Oct. 2019
IEEE Visualization
Gamut: A Design Probe to Understand How Data Scientists Understand Machine Learning Models
June 2019
Microsoft Machine Learning and Data Science Summit
May 2019
ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Explaining Machine Learning Models Using Interactive Visualization
Mar. 2019
Georgia Tech School of CSE Strategic Partnership Program Summit
Apr. 2019
Georgia Tech CSE 6242 Data and Visual Analytics
Mar. 2019
Symantec Research Labs
Mar. 2019
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Atlas: Local Graph Exploration in a Global Context
Mar. 2019
ACM Intelligent User Interfaces
Visual Analytics in Deep Learning: An Interrogative Survey for the Next Frontiers
Jan. 2019
Carnegie Mellon University
Oct. 2018
University of Georgia
Oct. 2018
IEEE Visualization
The Beginner's Guide to Dimensionality Reduction
Oct. 2018
VISxAI Workshop at IEEE Visualization
Comparing Interactive Local and Global Explanation Paradigms for Human-assisted Machine Learning Tasks
July 2018
Microsoft Research
Graph Playgrounds: 3D Exploration of Graph Layers via Vertex Cloning
Dec. 2017
AT&T Research Labs Graduate Student Symposium
A Viz of Ice and Fire: Exploring Entertainment Video Using Color and Dialogue
Oct. 2017
2nd Workshop on Visualization for the Digital Humanities at IEEE Visualization
Constellation: Visualizing Cybersecurity in Real Time
Aug. 2017
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Aug. 2017
California Institute of Technology
Visualizing Learned Semantics with Deep Learning
Nov. 2016
Georgia Tech Ph.D. Qualifying Oral Exam
Drawing Semantics with Deep Learning
2016
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
3D Printing The Trefoil Knot And Its Pages
Mar. 2015
UGA Center for Undergraduate Research Symposium, included hands-on demo
Experimental and Numerical Studies of Oceanic Overflow
June 2015
AMS Conference on Atmospheric and Oceanic Fluid Dynamics
Jan. 2015
Joint Mathematics Meeting
Nov. 2014
APS Division of Fluid Dynamics
Aug. 2014
Invited and presented on behalf at Brown University, Los Alamos National Lab
July 2014
Northeast REU Mini-Conference at Yale University
July 2014
University of Rhode Island Bay Campus
3D Printing in Topology
Mar. 2014
UGA Center for Undergraduate Research Symposium, included hands-on demo
Press
Nov. 2020
Nov. 2020
"Dense Discovery Issue 112," Dense Discovery
Oct. 2020
Oct. 2020
Oct. 2020
"Interactive data essays on climate change," Flowing Data
July 2020
"Python in Visual Studio Code - VSCode Features You Need to Know," Tech With Tim
July 2020
"Python in Visual Studio Code – July 2020 Release," Microsoft Developer Blog
June 2020
"How Do Neural Networks Learn?," Two Minute Papers
Mar. 2020
"Visualizing Fairness in Machine Learning," Data Stories Podcast
Nov. 2019
"The Interactive News Platform for Everyone," Stack Overflow Blog
Oct. 2019
"Is this the dynamic web we were promised?," Hanselminutes Podcast
June 2019
"Myth of the impartial machine," Flowing Data
May 2019
"The Secret Life of a JPEG," Fast Company
Dec. 2018
"'Human Rights' May Help Shape Artificial Intelligence in 2019," Georgia Tech, College of Computing
Dec. 2018
"Designers, Programmers, and Researchers Join Forces to Create a New Kind of Digital Magazine Called the Parametric Press," Georgia Tech, College of Computing
June 2018
"Georgia Tech Teams up with Intel to Protect Artificial Intelligence from Malicious Attacks Using SHIELD," Georgia Tech, College of Computing
Dec. 2017
"Georgia Tech Team To Use Microsoft Grant to Study Human Migration Dynamics," Georgia Tech, College of Computing
Sept. 2015
Spring 2015
"Student Profile: Fred Hohman," 2015 UGA Mathematics Department Newsletter
Feb. 2015
"Falling Water," MITgcm.org
Dec. 2014
"Mathematics/Physics Student Creates 3D Printed Puzzle of Trefoil Knot, Catches Mathematical Community's Interest," 3dprint.com
July 2014
"Day 311 - Trefoil Trumpet," Makerhome.com
Apr. 2014
"Mathematics with 3D Printing," Sketches of Topology
Teaching
Spring 2019
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA
Information Visualization (CS 4460),
Instructor:
Alex Endert
Designed homeworks, held weekly office hours, and mentored student team projects for Information Visualization (CS 4460), an undergraduate course with 134 students enrolled.
Spring 2017
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA
Data and Visual Analytics (CSE 6242 / CX 4242),
Instructor:
Duen Horng (Polo) Chau
Designed homeworks, held weekly office hours, and mentored student team projects for Data and Visual Analytics (CSE 6242 / CX 4242), a graduate course with 214 students enrolled.
2014 — 2015
Student Notetaker
University of Georgia, Athens, GA
Generated notes for undergraduate mathematics and physics courses for students with disabilities.
2012
Tutor
University of Georgia, Athens, GA
Specialized in tutoring calculus to undergraduates.
Mentoring
Spring + Summer 2021
Ph.D. in Information Technology, Ulm University
Reusable, explorable, and sharable data science components
Summer 2021
Ph.D. in Human-computer Interaction, Carnegie Mellon University
Reusable, explorable, and sharable data science components
Summer 2020
Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of Konstanz
Interactive confusion matrices and visualization for error analysis in machine learning
Summer 2020
Ph.D. in Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Designing data and proactive data collection for machine learning
Fall 2020 — Fall 2019
B.S. in Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology
Visualization for machine learning education
Sigma Xi Best Undergraduate Research Award, Georgia Institute of Technology
Fall 2020 — Fall 2019
B.S. in Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology
Visualization for machine learning education
Outstanding Senior Award, College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology
Spr. 2020 — Fall 2019
B.S. in Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology
Visualization for deep learning interpretability
Spr. 2020 — Spr. 2019
B.S. in Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology
Visual analytics for machine learning fairness
Stamps President's Scholar
Now: PhD Student (HCI) at Carnegie Mellon University
Spr. 2020 — Spr. 2019
B.S. in Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology
Visual graph analytics
Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher, College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology
President's Undergraduate Research Award
Now: Software Engineer II at Google
Spr. 2019 — Spr. 2018
B.S. in Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology
Visual analytics for machine learning fairness, interactive classification for deep learning
National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF GRFP)
Love Family Foundation Scholarship (most outstanding graduating senior), Georgia Institute of Technology
Stamps President's Scholar
Now: PhD Student (HCI) at Carnegie Mellon University
Spr. 2018 — Fall 2016
B.S. in Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology
Interactive visual motif discovery
Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher, College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology
Faculty Materials, Supplies, and Travel Grants for Undergraduate Research
Awarded President's Undergraduate Research Travel Award
Now: Software Development Engineer at Airbnb
Spr. 2018 — Fall 2017
M.S. in Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology
Visualization for deep learning attribution
Now: Software Development Engineer at Oath
Grants and Funding
2018 — 2021
Co-PIs:
Duen Horng (Polo) Chau
Funded $80,000/year for 3 years
2017 — 2018
Co-PIs:
Caleb Robinson,
Bistra Dilkina
Funded $15,000
Fall 2014
Co-PIs:
David Gay
Funded $1,000
Interactive Articles
January 2022
Developing flexible, interpretable models to assess how the effect of mobility changes
December 2021
Algorithms for measuring and understanding the best user experiences
October 2021
Efficient pixel-level understanding for the Camera
September 2021
Training regions in neural network subspaces to find high-accuracy solutions
August 2021
Developing new generative models that can learn probability distributions over realistic and unconstrained indoor scenes
July 2021
Improving the Photos experience by identifying people who matter most to us in situations where previously impossible
May 2021
Creating accessibility metadata for mobile applications from pixels
October 2020
Matthew Conlen,
Fred Hohman,
Sara Stalla,
Andrew Sass
Interactively analyze our climate’s past, present, and future
Your Personal Carbon History
by
Aatish Bhatia
Why you've lived through a period of unprecedented carbon emissions.
The Corporations Behind Climate Change
by
Geoffrey Litt,
Seth Thompson
Seven simple demands to hold fossil fuel companies accountable.
Tiny Algae and the Political Theater of Planting One Trillion Trees
by
Benjamin Cooley
To fight climate change, it's time to start thinking big by thinking small.
Drought of the Sinking Delta
by
Christina Orieschnig
Things are out of joint in the delta of the Mekong, Southeast Asia's largest river.
The Hidden Cost of Digital Consumption
by
Halden Lin,
Aishwarya Nirmal,
Shobhit Hathi,
Lilian Liang
Digital doesn't mean green. How much carbon dioxide was released when you loaded this article?
May 2019
Matthew Conlen,
Fred Hohman,
Sara Stalla,
Victoria Uren,
Andrew Sass
An experimental, born-digital magazine dedicated to showcasing the expository power that’s possible when the audio, visual, and interactive capabilities of dynamic media are effectively combined, Top of Hacker News, twice
Unraveling the JPEG
by
Omar Shehata
JPEG images are everywhere, but behind them are algorithms that remove details that are imperceptible to the human eye.
The Myth of the Impartial Machine
by
Alice Feng,
Shuyan Wu
Machine learning models reproduce inequalities within data they're fed. Can programmers free their models from prejudice?
Data Science for Fair Housing
by
Alyson Powell Key
In Atlanta, how effective is a new nonprofit's plan to resist displacement by supporting the city's most vulnerable residents?
Flatland Follies: An Adjunct Simulator
by
James McGirk
Play your way through the daily struggles of teaching and preserving art at a declining college.
On Particle Physics
by
Riccardo Maria Bianchi
A CERN particle physicist walks through the history and science of particle physics, and why you should care about it.
Anything That Flies, On Anything That Moves
by
Megan Vo
Dig into data of over two million bombings during a covert US assault on Southeast Asian countries from the 1960s and 70s.
November 2018
Caleb Robinson,
Fred Hohman
A toy algorithms problem
July 2018
Matthew Conlen,
Fred Hohman
Explore the methods data scientists use to visualize high-dimensional data, VISxAI Best Paper, Honorable Mention
June 2018
Fred Hohman
Riffling from factory order to complete randomness, Top of Hacker News, twice
October 2017
Fred Hohman,
Sandeep Soni,
Ian Stewart,
John Stasko
Exploring and visualizing Game of Thrones using color and dialogue
Service
Organizer
Program Commitee
Debugging Machine Learning Models Workshop
(DebugML) at ICLR
2019
Symposium on Visualization in Data Science
(VDS) at IEEE VIS
2018
Workshop on Visualization for AI Explainability
(VISxAI) at IEEE VIS
2018
Workshop on Interactive Data Exploration and Analytics
(IDEA) at KDD
2018
Reviewer
Visualization Meets AI
at PacificVis
2022
Rethinking ML Papers
at ICLR
2021
ACM Designing Interactive Systems
(DIS)
2021
ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems
(TIIS)
2021
IEEE Pacific Visualization Conference
(PacificVis)
2021
Distill Research Journal
(Distill)
2019
ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing
(CSCW)
2019
Human-Centered Machine Learning Perspectives Workshop
(HCMLP) at CHI
2019
1st Deep Learning and Security Workshop
(DLS) at IEEE SP
2018
IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems
(ICDCS)
2017
SIAM International Conference on Data Mining
(SDM)
2017
Institutional
Georgia Tech CSE Graduate Student Association, Vice President, 2018 - 2020
Georgia Tech CSE Chair Search Committee, 2019 - 2020
Member
Present — 2016
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Present — 2016
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
2012 — 2015
UGA Mathematics Club
2012 — 2013
Society of Physics Students, UGA Chapter (SPS)
2011 — 2015
National Society of Collegiate Scholars (NSCS)
Design
2017 — 2018
ACM SIGKDD Workshop on Interactive Data Exploration and Analytics (IDEA)
Designed workshop poster and conference proceedings cover
2017
ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), Denver, USA
Designed and implemented an interactive visualization of Brad Myers's advisee tree shown during his CHI 2017 Lifetime Research Award talk; designed accompanying ribbon worn by attendees at the conference
Aug. 2014
University of Georgia Mathematics Department, Athens, USA
Designed, modeled, and 3D printed cube decomposition trophy for annual UGA High School Math Tournament that was given to the top scoring teams and participants
Aug. 2014
University of Georgia Lamar Dodd School of Art, Athens, USA
Created 3D printed UGA keychain and presentation notes given at Experience UGA: a interdisciplinary event that exposes middle-school and high-school students to hands-on learning activities
References
Dr. Polo Chau, Associate Professor
School of Computational Science and Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Alex Endert, Associate Professor
School of Interactive Computing
Georgia Institute of Technology
Dr. Scott Davidoff, Senior Manager
Human-Centered Design Group
NASA Jet Propulsion Lab
Dr. Steven Drucker, Partner and Research Manager
Visualization and Interactive Data Analysis Group
Microsoft Research
Dr. Nathan Hodas, Senior Research Scientist
Data Sciences and Analytics Group
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory