I am a fifth year PhD student at UC Berkeley's Department of Computer Science, advised by Professor Maneesh Agrawala. My research focus is on information visualization, and I have worked on a number of topics in this area. My thesis work is on the application of artificial intelligence techniques (specifically, computer vision and natural language processing) to aid viewers in using charts.

I am affiliated with the Visualization Lab and the Berkeley Institute of Design. I've also had the privilege of working with amazing people at Microsoft Research, PARC, and Autodesk Research.

Prior to Berkeley, I studied Engineering Science at the University of Toronto.

Recent publications

InfoVis 2012 - Graphical Overlays Graphical Overlays: Using Layered Elements to Aid Chart Reading.
Nicholas Kong, Maneesh Agrawala.
InfoVis 2012, pp. 2631-2638.
CHI 2012 - Delta Delta: A Tool For Representing and Comparing Workflows.
Nicholas Kong, Tovi Grossman, Björn Hartmann, George Fitzmaurice, Maneesh Agrawala.
CHI 2012, pp. 1027-1036.
UIST 2011 - ReVision ReVision: Automated Classification, Analysis and Redesign of Chart Images.
Manolis Savva, Nicholas Kong, Arti Chhajta, Li Fei-Fei, Maneesh Agrawala, Jeffrey Heer.
UIST 2011, pp. 393-402. [Notable Paper Award]

Miscellanea

I was born in Calgary, Alberta, but I spent my formative years in The Netherlands. I'm very much a third culture kid. I'm constantly listening to music -- from metal to jazz to classical and everything in between. I'm also married to a wonderful neuroscience researcher.