About Me

I'm a first second year Computer Science PhD student researching information visualization with Professor Maneesh Agrawala. My current work deals with leveraging human perception to

1. Design more effective visualizations, and
2. Evaluate existing visualizations.

On a more personal note, I was born in Calgary, Alberta, but I spent my formative years in The Netherlands. I'm very much a third culture kid. I did my undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto and got out with a Bachelor's degree in Engineering Science (Computer Option).

When I'm not researching I dabble in origami and piano (10 years of lessons didn't do me much good!). I also listen to an almost unhealthy amount of music.

Publications

Perceptual Interpretation of Ink Annotations on Line Charts. Nicholas Kong, Maneesh Agrawala. Proc. of the 22nd Annual ACM Symposium on User interface Software and Technology (UIST 09). pp. 233-236.

Sizing the Horizon: The Effects of Chart Size and Layering on the Graphical Perception of Time Series Visualizations. Jeffrey Heer, Nicholas Kong, Maneesh Agrawala. ACM Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), Apr 2009. pp. 1303 - 1312. [24.5% Acceptance Rate, Best Paper Award]

Modeling Pointing at Targets of Arbitrary Shapes. Tovi Grossman, Nicholas Kong, Ravin Balakrishnan. Proc. ACM Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), Apr 2007. p. 463-472. [24% Acceptance Rate]

Teaching

Spring 2009

• User Interfaces (CS160), GSI

Courses

Spring 2009

• Human-Centered Computing (CS260)
• Teaching Techniques for Computer Science (CS301)

Fall 2008

• Visualization (CS294-10)
• Computer Vision (CS280)