I am a Ph.D. candidate, in my fifth year at the School of Information at the University of Michigan. My research interests are data visualization and human-computer interaction. My academic research explores how to design effective communicative visualizations. I use foundations in visual perception and cognitive science to understand how people read visualizations. Lately, I've been interviewing data visualization designers to talk to them about their design process and how they think about their dataviz goals.
For fun, I like to make art with watercolors and other random mediums, go hiking and camping, and play with my dog Pancake.
PhD student
University of Michigan
2019 - current
PhD student in the School of Information at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. My advisor is Eytan Adar.
Communications Fellow
Ecology Center
2023
Data visualization designer at the Ecology Center, a nonprofit for environmental health and climate justice.
Research Intern
Microsoft Research
2022
Summer intern at Microsoft Research, researching data storytelling with John Thompson, Bongshin Lee, and Steven Drucker.
Research Intern
American Institutes for Research
2021
Data visualization intern at the American Institutes for Research, visualizing the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data with Cadelle Hemphill, Tiago Caliço, and Juanita Hicks.
Lab Manager
Northwestern University
2017 - 2019
Lab manager at the Visual Thinking Lab with Steve Franconeri at Northwestern University.
BA, Information Technology
& Psychology
Rutgers University
2017
Research assistant at Rutgers University with Eileen Kowler and Jason Rubenstein.
🏆 Elsie Lee-Robbins & Eytan Adar (2022). Affective Learning Objectives for Communicative Visualizations. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics. [pdf] 🏆 Best Paper Award!
Elsie Lee-Robbins, Shiqing (Licia) He, & Eytan Adar (2021). Learning objectives, insights, and assessments: How specification formats impact design. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics. [pdf]
Eytan Adar & Elsie Lee (2020). Communicative visualizations as a learning problem. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics. [pdf]
Website under construction - Stay tuned for more!