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About Me




Email: [My last name] at gmail.com
Twitter: @wattenberg

Online collaborations
hint.fm - with Fernanda Viégas
MW2MW - with Marek Walczak


My research focuses on ways technology can create connection, insight, narrative, and beauty. A particular interest is inventing visual tools to illuminate systems based on machine learning and artificial intelligence. My work is in daily use by millions of people, and has been shown in museums worldwide.


Interested in working with me? Key tools in my research agenda include AI interpretability, data visualization, and user experience design. If this type of work interests you, and you're looking to enter the Ph.D. program at Harvard, or potentially apply for a post-doc in my research group, please contact me.


Detailed bio
I am a professor at Harvard and also a part-time member of Google Research's PAIR (People + AI Research) initiative, which I co-founded. My work, with long-time collaborator Fernanda Viégas, currently focuses on making AI technology broadly accessible and reflective of human values. At Google, my team, Fernanda, and I have also created end-user visualizations for products such as Search, YouTube, and Google Analytics.

Before joining Google, Fernanda and I founded Flowing Media, Inc., a visualization studio focused on media and consumer-oriented projects. Prior to Flowing Media, we led IBM’s Visual Communication Lab, which created the ground-breaking public visualization platform Many Eyes. I came to IBM from Dow Jones, where I was the Director of Research and Development at SmartMoney.com. My work there included some of the earliest pieces of interactive journalism.

I'm known for visualization-based artwork, which has been exhibited in venues such as the London Institute of Contemporary Arts, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the New York Museum of Modern Art.

I have a Ph.D. in mathematics from U.C. Berkeley, focusing on dynamical systems.


For more information
The Economist interview.
Boston Globe profile of me.
New York Times article on Many Eyes.
BusinessWeek Online profile of me.