Visualizing Complexity Science Workshop 2026
This immersive workshop challenges you to become a part of a team dedicated to visualizing the results of complexity science research.
Date: Mon, 24 Aug - Fri, 28 Aug, 2026
Location: Complexity Science Hub, Vienna, Austria
Participation fee: €400 *
* For those facing financial barriers, scholarships are available. Learn more in our FAQ section.
Overview
Join us for the fourth annual Visualizing Complexity Science Workshop. Apply your perspective and strengths to drive the concept and direction of a data visualization project based on real datasets.
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 2026
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 to visually communicate their findings. 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 brings together people inspired by the challenge to visualizing scientific research from a variety of disciplines and professions:
- 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 2026
Date: Mon, 24 Aug - Fri, 28 Aug, 2026
Participation fee: €400 *
* For those facing financial barriers, scholarships are available. Learn more in our FAQ section.
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. Each team will engage in
- 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
We’re still finalizing the detailed daily schedule, but for your travel planning, please note that Day 1 (24 Aug) will begin at 9:30 AM and Day 5 (28 Aug) will conclude around 16:00 (4:00 PM).
There will typically be group presentations on the afternoon of Day 5 (28 Aug), where you and your team will present your hands-on project.
We’re also planning an evening party on Day 4 (27 Aug) to connect our workshop community with a wider audience! Registration details for the party will be announced later.
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::
Workshop Co-Hosts
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. See his Timeline for details. He taught Information Design History at Northeastern University’s Information Design & Data Visualization program. 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. His is the author of Mapping Knowledge Across Time, Seven Books that Visualized the World (CRC Press 2026).
Liuhuaying Yang is a data visualization specialist and faculty member at the 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 received multiple international awards, including two Gold Information is Beautiful Awards, first place in the World Dataviz Prize, and the City of Vienna’s STEM Promotion Prize.
Guest speakers
Marco has worked as visual journalist for over 20 years in media outlets around the world, including Reuters in Singapore, La Nación in Costa Rica, and The South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. In 2021, Marco joined The New York Times as Graphics Editor to cover a wide range of topics using illustration, 3D, maps, video, diagrams and dataviz in general for storytelling. Throughout his career, Marco has garnered hundreds of awards from international organizations in Europe, Asia, and America. Marco was named “World’s Best Designer” by the non-profit Society for News Design (SND) in 2021, he achieved consecutive Pulitzer Prize wins in 2023 and 2024, and received the 2023 Majeri Award for innovation and leadership in journalism from Ball State University. Since 2025, Marco has been part of the Board of Directors of the SND, where he actively promotes initiatives to support students in the fields of journalism, design, and related careers.
Cary is a game designer. Her work focuses on creating interactive experiences that facilitate the acquisition and understanding of complex data and ideas through gameplay. As a Professor of Graphic Design at the University of Tennessee, she Co-Founded The APP.FARM, an interdisciplinary studio that brings together design, data, and technology. She collaborates across disciplines including French, Education (Autistic learners), Microbiology (bioremediation), Neuroscience and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and explores all media from VR to traditional print. Projects include: NSF-funded outreach, a VR experience of the mycorrhizal network, a game about ecological succession at Mount St. Helens, and exploring the impact of heat on nesting birds.
She has published and presented at conferences in graphic design, serious game design, computer science, language acquisition, and other fields in the U.S. and internationally.
Nathalie Miebach explores both the science behind extreme weather events due to climate change and the complicated human responses that unfold as our world is becoming hotter, drier, and wetter. The base material of her work is scientific data related to meteorology, ecology and oceanography, which she translates into woven sculptures and musical scores and installations. Miebach is the recipient of numerous awards and residencies, including a Pollock-Krasner Award, TED Global Fellowship, Virginia A. Groot Foundation Grant, and two Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowships. Her work has been shown in the US, Canada, Europe and Australia and has been reviewed by publications spanning fine arts, design, and technology. She lives in Boston.
Guest scientists
The leading Complexity Science Hub researchers we invited for hands-on projects module.
Rafael Prieto-Curiel is a Faculty Member at the Complexity Science Hub (CSH), where he joined as a postdoctoral research fellow in May 2022.
At CSH, he investigates the dynamics of organised crime alongside patterns of human mobility, migration flows, and urban development, with a focus on demographic trends in African cities. Before that he was at the Mathematical Institute of the University of Oxford/Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis at University College London, working on urban dynamics at the Peak Urban project. He has a master’s degree in statistics and a PhD degree from University College London UCL in maths and security and crime.
Rafael was director of strategic analysis at the Emergency Attention Centre of Mexico City where he worked on crime forecasting and police and resources allocation. At CSH, he works on mobility, migration, urban dynamics, and a demographic analysis of African cities.
Katharina Ledebur has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Complexity Science Hub since March 2025. Her research interests include modeling and analyzing the causes and consequences of diseases. She explores the impact of environmental and contextual factors on health, including the effects of climate change on morbidity and mortality, as well as chronic disease dynamics in aging societies. Additionally, she studies infectious disease dynamics and their consequences.
She completed her PhD at the Complexity Science Hub and the Medical University of Vienna in March 2025. Katharina holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in biophysics from Humboldt University of Berlin. Prior to joining CSH, she completed her master’s project and thesis, which focused on pattern formation in spatial co-infection systems, at the Robert Koch Institute (Germany) as a member of the Computational Epidemiology group.
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 and 2026
The workshops hosted in 2023 and 2024
Garden in Palais Strozzi (Complexity Science Hub)