Human-Centered Data Science Lab

HDS Lab member Ray Hong recently received an Innovation Corps Sites Program (I-Corps Site) grant from the National Science Foundation.  The I-Corps Site program is designed to support entrepreneurialism and smooth the transition of research from academia to the market. Hong will use the award to develop the commercial potential of his “Traffigram” distance cartogram, which considers more than just proximity when calculating distance.  “Most available distance cartograms are useful as long as you only care about travel time,” says Hong. “But people’s preferences are actually more complex than that.” For example, if someone is traveling to a city for a conference, they may want to find accommodation that’s not only nearby, but also within a certain price range and has been favorably reviewed. Ray is working on a series of techniques that that will make such tasks easier.