Departments
Art + Design, Architecture
Education
- PhD, Computational Media Design, University of Calgary
- M.Arch, University of Calgary
Carmen is an Assistant Professor of Information Design and Data Visualization with a joint appointment in the College of Arts, Media, and Design and Architecture. She takes inspiration from her background in film and architecture to make physical and immersive data visualizations and tools, emphasizing generative design, visual cognition, and information visualization principles. She received her PhD at the University of Calgary in Computational Media Design and has taught in art, engineering, human computer interaction, and data science departments. Previous work on large-scale urban design and architectural projects inspired her research on immersive data visualizations that leverage our inherent spatial intelligence and embodied sensemaking abilities. Her projects included a 3D interactive tabletop model visualizing energy use data for a university campus, a patented generative design extension for Tableau Software, and a large-scale installation visualizing global gender gap statistics that is slated for exhibition at the UN in Geneva in 2023.
Carmen is a recipient of the prestigious AITF scholarship and has presented her research at CHI, VIS, and the Women in Data Science event. She has been profiled in IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications and was selected an Innovator for Change in 2021. Her work has been published in top-tier journals such as ACM SIGCHI, IEEE VIS, and CG+A Journals.
Her current research directions include generative and machine learning systems for data visualization, spatial intelligence and visual cognition, and telling stories with data through multiple modalities, domains, and scales.