Danielle Szafir

Danielle Szafir is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, leading the UNC/CU VisuaLab. Her research bridges visualization, computer graphics, and cognitive science, focusing on human-computer interaction, color science, and accessible data representation. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has taught courses such as COMP 790/590-173 (Information Visualization) and ATLS 5519 (Research Methods). Her work is supported by grants from NSF, NIH, and the U.S. Air Force.

Research interests include

• Human-AI collaboration in analytics
• Cognitive accessibility in visualizations
• Immersive analytics for AR/VR
• Color encoding models

Recent grants include a State of the States award (2024) to advance cognitively accessible visualization. She has advised students like Sophia Lin (Honors thesis, 2024) and postdocs such as Ghulam Quadri (now at OU). Key awards include the Best Paper Award (IEEE VIS 2017) and NSF CAREER funding (2021).

Her lab develops tools like Cieran (color map design) and PD-Insighter (health analytics). Collaborations span genomics, bioinformatics, and psychology.