We will be having Dr. Mai Elshehaly Link opens in a new windowfrom the giCentre at City, University of London for a talk titled "How Do Decision Makers Use Visualisation? A Population Health Perspective". The talk will take place on Wednesday, March 6th, 14:30 - 16:00 at A0.23 at the Social Sciences buildings.

Title: How Do Decision Makers Use Visualisation? A Population Health Perspective.

Visualisation is the graphical representation of data that offers audiences a qualitative understanding of information. It enables humans to make sense of large amounts of data and generate new insights about the past, present and future. However, there is a well-documented gap between this insight generation process and the real-world practice of decision making. This is especially true in population health management, where decision makers rely more on soft intelligence, describing pressing situations on the ground and perceptions of ongoing and emerging risk. In this context, the role of data-driven evidence relies heavily on how much it connects with real-world situations.

In this talk, I will highlight some of the gaps in our data-centric view of visualisation. I will explain how shifting the focus from data to narrative can create new opportunities, not just to inform, but to shift decision makers’ attitudes toward situations that are otherwise hidden or reduced to abstractions that poorly reflect the lived experiences of populations represented in data.

Bio:

Dr. Mai Elshehaly is a Lecturer in Visualisation at the giCentre at City, University of London.

Mai designs, develops and evaluates visual analytics workflows to support decision-making. An Honorary Research Fellow at the Wolfson Centre for Applied Health Research, Mai leads the visualisation research agenda at the Yorkshire and Humber Patient Safety Research Centre. She works closely with colleagues at local authorities and several partner organisations to deliver data literacy to over 30,000 young citizens in Bradford. Mai received a PhD in Computer Science from the Center for Human-Computer Interaction at Virginia Tech, with a focus on scientific data visualisation. Her postdoctoral research experience included NSF- and NIHR-funded fellowships at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and University of Leeds.