Mentorship and Support
I am willing to provide research mentorship and support for students/researchers in underrepresented countries in terms of visualization research. If you are interested, please read below and contact me at my email
(takanori.fujiwara at
liu.se).
Motivation
Visualization research is skill-demanding. It requires heavy UI/graphics programming, rich experience in data abstraction and visual encodings, various background knowledge on computational analysis methods, convincing paper writing, and much
more. From my own experience, these skills are hard to gain from just passively reading books and papers (especially for novices). But, support from a mentor who already has the skills greatly helps and speeds up the learning process.
This may be difficult if (1) you do not have such a person physically around you or (2) the person is out of reach for other reasons (for example, because they are too busy). I was studying visualization in Japan for two years as a Master's student (2009-2011) and later in the US for six years as a Ph.D. student (2015-2021). Before moving to the U.S., I never imagined how significantly different the research environment is between Japan and the U.S. The U.S. presented abundant mentorships and collaboration opportunities that were not readily present when I was in Japan. I strongly attribute how these mentorship and collaboration opportunities shaped my current research ability.
But why was I not able to find a good mentor for me in Japan? Of course, there are various reasons. But in retrospect, I reflect one major reason is that visualization research field in Japan was not well-cultivated while I was a Master’s student. Having many well-trained researchers makes it possible to foster many good next researchers. Analogous to the relationships between soil and plants, once the soil is ready for planting, maintaining the soil for the next year’s harvest is not difficult.
Stemming from my past experiences and current thoughts, I would like to offer mentorship to a few individuals so that they can mentor the next generation of visualization researchers. Through this effort, I would like to cultivate a visualization research environment for countries where their research results are not internationally well recognized or in current development.
This may be difficult if (1) you do not have such a person physically around you or (2) the person is out of reach for other reasons (for example, because they are too busy). I was studying visualization in Japan for two years as a Master's student (2009-2011) and later in the US for six years as a Ph.D. student (2015-2021). Before moving to the U.S., I never imagined how significantly different the research environment is between Japan and the U.S. The U.S. presented abundant mentorships and collaboration opportunities that were not readily present when I was in Japan. I strongly attribute how these mentorship and collaboration opportunities shaped my current research ability.
But why was I not able to find a good mentor for me in Japan? Of course, there are various reasons. But in retrospect, I reflect one major reason is that visualization research field in Japan was not well-cultivated while I was a Master’s student. Having many well-trained researchers makes it possible to foster many good next researchers. Analogous to the relationships between soil and plants, once the soil is ready for planting, maintaining the soil for the next year’s harvest is not difficult.
Stemming from my past experiences and current thoughts, I would like to offer mentorship to a few individuals so that they can mentor the next generation of visualization researchers. Through this effort, I would like to cultivate a visualization research environment for countries where their research results are not internationally well recognized or in current development.
Eligibility
From this motivation, I am willing to help a person who can satisfy the conditions below (but, I can provide some flexibility even if you feel you do not satisfy some of the conditions. Do not hesitate to contact me). Because I am working for
Linköping University, I will be using my personal time for this mentorship and am able to help only a few people (2 or 3) at the same time. In your email message (in English or Japanese), please indicate why you feel you satisfy these
conditions. I will try to respond to your email within a week.
students or (potential) researchers who are currently in countries that are typically underrepresented in terms of visualization research (for example, Japan is included, but the US is not included. You can refer to “Author Affiliation” in
the dataset available at https://sites.google.com/site/vispubdata/home. I will generate statistics from this data when I have time.)
who have clear goals knowing what they want to achieve from this opportunity
who have at least basic knowledge of programming and a strong interest in visualization
who can communicate either in English or Japanese
who can find time at least once per two weeks to virtually meet between 4 PM-12 AM CET/CEST (but, I can slightly adjust this)
Last update 2022/04/10.