Research Assistant Opportunity

Posted Tue Sep 06 2016 by Sophie Engle

The Visualization and Graphics Lab is looking to hire one research assistant for the Fall 2016 semester. This is an on-campus job opportunity open to both undergraduate and graduate students.

Responsibilities

The duties for the research assistant will be as follows:

  • Assisting with the coding and analysis necessary on any of the active research projects in the lab. This includes work on visualization aesthetics and literacy, cluster heatmaps, and others.

  • Assisting with the design of user studies to evaluate the efficiency and accuracy of specific visualization tasks.

  • Assisting with one-on-one expert user studies.

  • Assisting with writeups of user study results in preparation for publication.

Students should expect to work a minimum of 10 hours per week. If the research is successful, students will be invited to be a co-author on related publications.

Qualifications

Current undergraduate (or graduate) students may apply for the position, but must already be proficient in object-oriented programming. Most undergraduate CS majors, CS minors, and computational Data Science majors that have passed both CS 212 and CS 245, or graduates that have passed CS 601 will qualify, but others can apply too.

Strong applicants will also have some familiarity with data visualization. This includes students that take visualization-focused sections of CS 384/694 Research Seminar, CS 398/498/698 Directed Reading and Research, and CS 386/686 Special Topics in CS. It also includes students that take CS 360 Data Visualization.

We are looking for students who know or are willing to learn JavaScript and D3 and who would ideally have created basic data visualizations (bar charts, scatterplots, etc.) before they begin the research assistant position.

Applicants should also be interested in continuing the research project beyond a single semester, either in a paid position or as a directed study opportunity. Applicants must be detail-oriented self-motivated independent workers with excellent written and oral communication skills.

Email your 1 page cover letter and 1 to 2 page resume by September 16th in PDF form to vgl@cs.usfca.edu with the subject "VGL Research Assistant Position" to be considered. In your cover letter, indicate you are applying for the research assistant position and highlight your qualifications.

We have multiple open positions. Please apply for only 1 position and indicate this position in your cover letter.