Visualizing Complexity Science Workshop 2025
This immersive workshop challenges you to become a part of a team dedicated to visualizing the results of complexity science research.
Date: Mon, 25 Aug - Fri, 29 Aug, 2025
Location: Complexity Science Hub, Vienna, Austria
Participation fee: €400
For those facing financial barriers, scholarships are available. Learn more in our FAQ section.
Guest speakers
Guest artist
Guest scientists
Overview
Visualizing Complexity Science Workshop offers you the opportunity to apply your perspective and strengths to drive the concept and direction of a data visualization project based on real datasets. This is a unique opportunity to experience a form of collaboration generally not available to visualization professionals.
The 5-day in-person program, held at Complexity Science Hub in central Vienna, features presentations by experts from the international art / science / journalism / visualization communities. See the list of speakers for 2025
Participants will work in teams consisting of professional Scientists, Developers, Visualization Designers, Journalists, and Artists. Each team will be challenged to collaboratively analyze data from current complexity science research problems , then make their own choices about how to visually communicate what they find. Teams will participate in group discussions with scientists and peer professionals, alongside hands-on team working sessions to produce complexity science visualizations.
Who this is for
This workshop is for people from a variety of disciplines and professions, who are inspired by the challenge to visualizing scientific research:
- Scientists engaged in complexity science research
- Developers, engaged in coding and analyzing data
- Designers, engaged in creating qualitative or quantitative visualizations
- Journalists, engaged in data storytelling for a large audience
- Artists, making use of data in artistic creation in any media
You will gain
- communication and visualization strategies for data-driven scientific findings,
- the opportunity to engage with our guest speakers,
- inspirations and experience exchange from peers,
- a complex science visualization project to enrich your portfolio.
Visualizing Complexity Science Workshop 2025
Vienna Dataviz Garden Party
Although applications are now closed, we’re excited to host a special Data Visualization Meetup at the venue to connect our workshop with the wider community.
Where: Complexity Science Hub, Vienna, Austria
When: 19:00 (7pm), Thursday, August 28, 2025
Workshop modules
Formation of multidisciplinary teams
On the first day of the workshop, we will form multidisciplinary teams. The workshop leaders will introduce the goals and framework for the coming days:
- The role visualization plays in communicating complexity scientific research to different audiences
- How scientists and designers collaborate to identify the appropriate information to visualize
- Visualization strategies and techniques best suited to complexity science models and datasets
Talks by the guest speakers
Guest speakers from the international art / science / journalism / visualization communities will share their experience and projects, and be available to discuss ideas with workshop participants.
Hands-on projects
Researchers from Complexity Science Hub will introduce their projects and datasets to the workshop. Participants will be grouped into teams and select the complexity science visualization project of their choice. Projects will include
- ideation and exploration
- Q&A with Complexity Science Hub researchers
- blue-print presentations and feedback
- final presentations and critique.
Complexity Science Hub researchers will participate in feedback for each team’s final presentation.
Program schedule
Blue-print and final presentations will be conducted in groups, with you and your team showcasing your hands-on projects.
Vienna Dataviz Garden Party
Although applications are now closed, we’re excited to host a special Data Visualization Meetup at the venue to connect our workshop with the wider community! As workshop attendees, you are automatically registered, but feel free to spread the word if you know others who might be interested. To register, go this link.
What is complexity science?
Complexity science studies systems characterized by many components and their surrounding environment that interact in multiple ways. Research focuses on networks of interactions, complex dynamical processes, and advanced mathematical and computational modeling. Models reveal how these systems are structured and change with time.
To become familiar with Complexity Science projects, look at these examples from the Complexity Science Hub::
Know about instructors
Paul Kahn’s engagement with visualization of large knowledge structures began with hypertext research projects in the 1980s and continued with the development of diagram techniques for describing information architecture. He began teaching Information Design History at Northeastern University’s Information Design & Data Visualization program in 2015. Paul created the first agency in France focused on information architecture, preceded by a decade leading Dynamic Diagrams in Providence RI, and led UX projects as Experience Design Director at Mad*Pow. During and after the pandemic, he developed and wrote about the Covid-19 Online Visualization Collection (COVIC). His essays about information design and data visualization appear in Nightingale and EYE Magazine.
Liuhuaying Yang is a data visualization researcher at Complexity Science Hub. Her expertise is in design and front-end development of interactive data visualizations on the interface of academic research and applications. She has worked with the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Agency, the MIT Senseable City Lab and SMART Future Mobility in Singapore as a data visualization specialist, and SPH Lianhe Zaobao in Singapore as a data visualization designer for interactive data journalism projects. Her work has been awarded the first prize in the 2019 TRB Innovations in Transit Performance Measurement Challenge and recently won first place in the interactive category of the World Dataviz Prize 2023.
Guest speakers
Dietmar Offenhuber is Professor and Chair of the Department of Art + Design at Northeastern University, with a secondary appointment in the School of Public Policy. Trained as an Architect, he received a Master Master of Science from the MIT Media Lab and a PhD in Urban Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research focuses on data infrastructures, environmental information, visualization and evidence construction. He has published several books, including the award-winning Waste is Information – Infrastructure Legibility and Governance ( MIT Press). His new book Autographic Design - the Matter of Data in a Self-Inscribing World, published at MIT Press, examines design and visualization practices based on material and environmental information.
Jason Forrest is a data visualization and design expert in New York City working at the intersection of business, culture, and data. He is the founder of the Jason Forrest Agency, focused on solving complex problems in business and industry by elevating the communication and understanding of data.
He was an Associate Partner at McKinsey and Company and Director of the Data Visualization Lab supporting over 30 clients in 2 years. In his 9 year tenure at McKinsey, he launched the McKinsey Health Institute, spearheaded the COVID Response Center, and contributed to many high-profile events like McKinsey's presence at COP26. His work spans industries and technologies, consulting Fortune 100 corporations, NGOs, and non-profit foundations. He built digital tools, dashboards, and scrollytelling experiences for the C-suite, helped to map McKinsey's history, and created data sculptures to inspire the entire organization.
He is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Nightingale: The Journal of the Data Visualization Society, where he fosters a global discourse on data visualization, supporting thousands of writers in expanding the narrative. In 2022, he established Nightingale Magazine, a print publication that ships to 57 countries and continues to explore how dataviz is discussed, practiced, and valued.
Julia is a data journalist and data visualization reporter from the US and Taiwan, and has also worked in Japan, France and the UK. She is interested particularly in environmental issues, biodiversity conservation, science, tech, democracy and disinformation. She currently works at Bloomberg after working for AFP, and some of her past clients include Reuters Graphics, Global Fishing Watch, Climate Policy Initiative, the Urban Institute and various UN organizations. She was also the data journalism fellow at the Centre for Humanitarian Data in 2021. Previously, Julia worked at a biodiversity/biocomplexity lab at the Okinawa Institute of Science & Technology. Julia's work has been recognized by the Society for News Design and Information is Beautiful Awards. Her work at Reuters Graphics, as part of a portfolio of four pieces highlighting the future of biodiversity, won the World’s Best-Designed Digital News Experience at SND. Her work on bubble tea for Taiwan Data Stories won the Pudding Cup in 2022. She received two M.S. degrees from UW-Madison in Entomology and Environmental Observation and Informatics.
Miriam Quick is a journalist, author and musician who explores novel and diverse ways of telling stories with data that blend science and art. She has turned numbers into everything from charts, graphics and books to museum installations, necklaces, engraved 12-inch records and pieces of music. Her work has been published by the BBC and Scientific American and she works with creative studios to make data-driven stories and visualisations for clients.
She creates artworks that represent data through sound, images and sculpture, often in collaboration with others. These have been exhibited at museums and galleries internationally. She is the co-founder, with Duncan Geere, of the Loud Numbers data sonification studio and co-presenter of the Loud Numbers podcast. Her book, I am a book. I am a portal to the universe. co-authored with Stefanie Posavec, was published by Penguin in 2020. It won the Royal Society’s Young People’s Book Prize 2021 and an Information is Beautiful Award 2022.
Guest artist
Guest artist will join us to offer mentorship, and run a workstation equipped with versatile analog working tools the explore physical art and visualization technologies to our workshop for the hands-on projects module.
Melinda Sipos is an artist and Fulbright researcher alumna based in Budapest, Hungary. She specializes in transforming complex datasets into immersive installations that engage audiences deeply and open new pathways for understanding social topics. In recent years, Sipos has created numerous site-specific artworks, including an installation on childbirth in Hungary, data sculptures for the Museum of Ethnography and the Jewish Museum and Archive in Budapest, a network visualization at Barabási Lab in Boston, and a pop-up piece for the Information Design Conference in Hilversum. She has also led numerous workshops on data physicalization, guiding participants in academia and adult training programs in Hungary and worldwide through creative, hands-on processes.
Guest scientists
The leading Complexity Science Hub researchers we invited for hands-on projects module.
Lisette Espín-Noboa is a postdoctoral researcher at the Complexity Science Hub (CSH), where she is part of the Algorithmic Fairness and Network Inequality group. She is also affiliated with the Department of Network and Data Science at Central European University (CEU). Her work bridges Computational Social Science, Network Science, and Artificial Intelligence, with a special focus on achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
At CSH, Dr. Espín-Noboa examines algorithmic fairness through a social network lens, identifying conditions under which network-driven inequalities in decision-making are justifiable or unjust (aligned with SDGs 5, 10, and 16). She also studies the role of collaboration networks, parenthood, and online visibility in academic success and is developing a tool to increase the visibility of under-represented scholars (SDG 5).At CEU, she leverages multi-modal data sources, including satellite imagery and mobility networks, to develop high-resolution poverty maps. To enhance the reliability, she is also designing low-cost, accurate solutions that incorporate contingency plans to address missing data.
Daniele joined the Complexity Science Hub as a PhD candidate in January 2025. Working with the ERC-funded Collective Minds group, his research explores how beliefs form and spread through society. He studies language models both as tools for social science research – simulating social dynamics and inferring beliefs from text data – and as technological actors that actively shape human behavior and beliefs. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and a master’s degree in Data Science from the University of Padova. During his master, he conducted a research internship at TU Graz, where he investigated bias in large language models and their impact on diversity in academic recommendations.
Venue
The venue for this workshop is at Complexity Science Hub in Vienna. CSH was recently relocated to Metternichgasse 8 in Vienna's 3rd district, Landstraße, a short distance from the city center, housed in Palais Rothschild built between 1891 and 1893.
Palais Rothschild (Complexity Science Hub)
The Venue for Workshop 2025
The workshops hosted in 2023 and 2024
Garden in Palais Strozzi (Complexity Science Hub)