Christopher Collins
BSc, MSc, PhD
Professor
(former) Canada Research Chair in Linguistic Information Visualization
Computer Science
Faculty of Science
I lead the Visualization for Information Analysis Lab (vialab), where we focus on creating new interface designs for helping people understand and analyze large collections of data. I also conduct research in human-computer interaction, with a focus on novel user interfaces such as touch, pen, virtual reality, and augmented reality. I also teach primarily in the digital media specialization of our CS undergraduate and graduate programs.
Contact information
Science Building
- Room UA4024
North Oshawa
2000 Simcoe Street North
Oshawa, ON L1G 0C5
905.721.8668 ext. 6581
Research topics
- Information Visualization
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Pen+Touch Interface Design
- Information Overload
- Detecting Emotion in Text
- Interactive Information Graphics
- Text Analytics
- Visual Analytics
- Password Security
- Data Science
Areas of expertise
- Computer Science
- Visual Analytics
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Interaction Design
- Data Analytics
- Visualization
Background
Dr. Christopher Collins is Professor of Computer Science at Ontario Tech University and an alumnus of the Canada Research Chair program, having held the Chair in Linguistic Information Visualization from 2013-2023. His research focus is interdisciplinary, combining information visualization and human-computer interaction with natural language processing to address the challenges of information management and the problems of information overload. Dr. Collins has published over 80 peer-reviewed contributions have been cited over 4600 times. His work has appeared in top-tier venues such as ACM CHI and IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, and has been awarded honorable mention awards at ACM CHI and IEEE VIS. He has received over $3 million in research funding as the sole PI. The impact of Dr. Collins’ research garnered media attention from outlets including the New York Times and CBS Sunday Morning. He has given invited lectures and keynotes at academic and industry labs in Canada, the US, and Europe. Dr. Collins serves on the Board of Governors of Ontario Tech University, the IEEE VIS Conference Executive Committee and is an Associate Editor of ACM TiiS and IEEE CG&A. He received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Toronto.
Education
- PhD University of Toronto 2010
- MSc University of Toronto 2004
- BSc (Hons) Memorial University 2001
Courses taught
- CSCI 4620 Human-Computer Interaction
- CSCI 3090 Computer Graphics & Visualization
- CSCI 4210 Information Visualization
