Biography

Rudolf W. Strohmeier has been Director-General of the Publications Office since May 2016.

Previously Deputy Director-General for Research & Innovation at the Commission, he has a background in law and economics.

Working in the European Commission since 1987, he was inter-alia serving in the Cabinets of President Prodi, Commissioners Schmidhuber, Fischler (Deputy Head of Cabinet) and Reding II (Head of Cabinet).

Biography

In 2013, Marc Hansen was elected to Parliament until he entered the government in 2014. Following the 2018 legislative elections, Marc Hansen was appointed:

• Minister for the Civil Service,
• Minister for Relations with Parliament,
• Minister Delegate for Digitalisation and
• Minister Delegate for Administrative Reform.

Before starting his political career, he worked as a reporter for RTL Lëtzebuerg and, later on, he became chief executive officer and managing director of Éditions Lëtzebuerger Journal. He was also the cofounder of several innovative start-ups in the information technology sector.

Biography

Victoria Boeck is an open data researcher at the Technologiestiftung Berlin.

There she leads the ‘Open Data Informationsstelle’ (ODIS), a cooperation between the Technologiestiftung and the Berlin city government that aims to encourage more open data publishing among government employees.

Part of these activities include coming up with ideas of how to make open data more accessible and useful through visualisations and other applications of the data.

She is a graduate of the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, where she studied public policy.

Session

How can a government increase awareness of and enthusiasm for their open data programmes in the face of existing challenges?

One not-so-obvious answer: This talk will focus on how public sector data visualisation can be used to support public sector policy goals through concrete successful examples.

Biography

Marc Wilikens is the Head of the knowledge management methodologies, communities and dissemination unit at the European Commission's Joint Research Centre.

The unit provides practical and comprehensive solutions to support the vision of the JRC "to play a central role in creating, managing and making sense of collective scientific knowledge for better EU policies".

In this context, informing policymakers and citizens of our science in impactful ways increasingly relies on the power of visual communication.

As part of the activities, the unit develops core competence in the design of infographics and audio-visual products in co-creation with JRC scientists for integration in flagship publications and knowledge for policy communication products.

Session

The Joint Research Centre has produced 10 flagship reports linking state-of-the-art knowledge with key policy topics.

This is an inspiring talk about the design process and the solutions and lessons learned from visualising the complex Knowledge4Policy that is embedded in reports and in associated communication products like social media.

Biography

Xaquín G.V. is an award-winning expert in data-driven visual storytelling.

He recently led the Visuals desk at The Guardian.

Before that, he worked at National Geographic, The New York Times, and El Mundo.

Session

Data visualisation is as susceptible to misinterpretation and manipulation as any other communication method.

How to spot misleading visuals, prevent biases when selecting the frame and the visualisation, and ensure data and visual literacy to prevent misinformation?

Biography

Benjamin Wiederkehr is an interaction designer with a focus on data visualisation and interface design.

He is co-founder and managing director of Interactive Things, a design and technology studio specialised in data visualisation and user experience design.

Benjamin lectures on the topics of data visualisation and interface design at Zürich University of Arts and the University of the Arts Bern.

Session

Finding the right place on the spectrum between explanatory and exploratory is a key milestone when building a data publication.

Illustrated by two case studies, this talk will walk the audience through the processes behind the data strategy and data design that lead to very different results.

Biography

Juan Arevalo Torres is an entrepreneur working in the field of spatial data science and visualisation.

He uses spatial data and open source software to inform decision-makers and citizens alike.

He has more than 14 years of experience working in the private sector, for NGOs and in the public sector, including for the European Commission and the United Nations.

His latest data visualisation projects include the Urban Data Platform, several renewable energy decision-support tools in western Africa, a multilingual storytelling tool for the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of Unesco (IOC-UNESCO) and a forest fire mapping project using Copernicus data.

Session

How to create spatial data visualisation tools that are easy to use, beautiful, capture attention and inspire actions.

This presentation will be a source of inspiration for everyone interested in earth observation and geographical data.

Biography

Ever since the completion of her studies, Caroline has been nurturing a passion for how information can be expressed, shared and understood.

In 2010, sensing that the rich data era will transform the way we work, learn and communicate, she co-founded Dataveyes, a studio specialised in Human–Data interactions.

Within Dataveyes, she translates data into interactive experiences, in order to reveal new insightful stories, accompany new uses and understand our environment shaped by data and algorithms.

Session

In the case of data visualisation, ‘making the invisible visible’ has a special meaning.

It is less about improving our sight and more about enhancing our perception of the world and our understanding of the phenomena around us.

Biography

Barthélémy von Haller (senior software engineer, CERN) studied Computer Science at EPFL and started working at CERN shortly after his MSc.

His initial years were spent in IT, developing project management software, before moving to the Experimental Physics department.

There, he joined the Data Acquisition group of the ALICE experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, where he is responsible for the design and development of the tools to monitor the data quality.

This field, which includes the visualisation of the phenomena recorded by the detectors, is a key element of large scientific experiments in general, such as the LHC's ones, or the Blue Brain Project where he carried out a similar project.

Session

Subatomic particles make up everything that we observe in the universe and yet they are far too tiny to see.

CERN will present efforts to handle and visualise the millions of gigabytes of data that experiments record every year.

DNEG will speak about the challenges of visualising the complex physics of the universe’s most massive objects (black holes and gravitational waves) and how they approached the visual effects for the Hollywood movie Interstellar, as well as their collaboration with the Nobel laureate in Physics Kip Thorne to develop a new tool to visualise space.

For copyright reasons, we are unable to show the presentation of Oliver James. For further information you may contact the speaker.

Biography

Jeremi Niedziela is a researcher in CMS experiment s at LHC, working on the fundamental problems of modern physics.

His current focus is searching for short, disappearing tracks, a possible signature of supersymmetric particles that live very briefly before decaying into Dark Matter particles, as well as light-by-light scattering — an elusive but fundamental Quantum Mechanical process.

Previously he has worked on the collisions visualisation system of ALICE, allowing the revealing of particles invisible to the human eye, which is useful to better understand physics phenomena, but also to monitor data acquisition online.

Session

Subatomic particles make up everything that we observe in the universe and yet they are far too tiny to see.

CERN will present efforts to handle and visualise the millions of gigabytes of data that experiments record every year.

DNEG will speak about the challenges of visualising the complex physics of the universe’s most massive objects (black holes and gravitational waves) and how they approached the visual effects for the Hollywood movie Interstellar, as well as their collaboration with the Nobel laureate in Physics Kip Thorne to develop a new tool to visualise space.

For copyright reasons, we are unable to show the presentation of Oliver James. For further information you may contact the speaker.

Biography

Oliver James is Chief Scientist at DNEG.

He has spent over 20 years in the visual effects industry developing technology to deliver some of the most demanding effects in film.

Oliver led the development of the DNEG Gravitational Renderer, which enabled the creation of the Oscar- and BAFTA-winning visual effects for Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar.

Session

Subatomic particles make up everything that we observe in the universe and yet they are far too tiny to see.

CERN will present efforts to handle and visualise the millions of gigabytes of data that experiments record every year.

DNEG will speak about the challenges of visualising the complex physics of the universe’s most massive objects (black holes and gravitational waves) and how they approached the visual effects for the Hollywood movie Interstellar, as well as their collaboration with the Nobel laureate in Physics Kip Thorne to develop a new tool to visualise space.

For copyright reasons, we are unable to show the presentation of Oliver James. For further information you may contact the speaker.

Biography

Paul Hofheinz is president and co-founder of the Lisbon Council, an independent, non-partisan think tank and research centre based in Brussels, Belgium. It was founded in 2003.

Previously, Mr. Hofheinz worked as a writer and editor at The Wall Street Journal, covering such diverse topics as European integration, financial-market regulation, emerging markets and Russia. In 1998-1999, he was managing editor of Central European Economic Review. Prior to that, he was associate editor of Fortune. He began his career in London as a reporter for Time magazine.

Mr. Hofheinz holds a Master of Science (MSc) degree in the government and politics of Russia from London School of Economics and a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in history from Yale, where he received the prestigious John Addison Porter and Dean Henry P. Wright prizes upon graduation. He speaks fluent English, French and Russian.