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About Me



Email: [My last name] at gmail.com
Bluesky: @wattenberg.bsky.social


My research focuses on ways technology can create connection, narrative, and insight. 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.


Brief bio
I am a professor at Harvard, where I co-lead the Insight + Interaction Lab with long-time collaborator Fernanda Viégas. I'm also a part-time member of Google DeepMind's PAIR (People + AI Research) initiative, which she and I co-founded. My work currently focuses on making AI technology broadly accessible and reflective of human values. Before focusing on machine learning at Google, I helped create end-user visualizations for products such as Search, YouTube, and Google Analytics.

Prior to joining Google, Fernanda and I founded Flowing Media, Inc., a visualization studio focused on media and consumer-oriented projects. Before that, 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.