People

Dr Sara Johansson Fernstad

  • Senior Lecturer, Director of Postgraduate Research Scalable Computing
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  • Sara is a Senior Lecturer in Data Science with expertise in visualization. She is the Director of Postgraduate Research in the School of Computing.

Bio

Sara received a PhD from Norrköping Visualization Centre-C, Linköping University, Sweden, in 2011, with a thesis titled Algorithmically Guided Information Visualization: Explorative Approaches for High Dimensional, Mixed and Categorical Data. Following her PhD she held positions as Data Visualization Scientist at Unilever R&D Port Sunlight (2011-2013), and as PostDoc in Data Visualization at the Unilever Centre for Molecular Science Informatics at Cambridge University, UK (2013-2014). This was followed by a lectureship in Computer Science at Northumbria University, UK (promoted to Senior Lecturer 2016). She was appointed Lecturer in Data Science at Newcastle University, UK, in 2017.

Research

Sara's main research interests is Data Visualization, with particular interest in challenges relating to high dimensional data, heterogeneous data, and uncertainty and structural missingness in data. These challenges are all highly relevant in a range of application domains, not least in biomedical domains and life sciences, which are becoming more and more data driven. Her work on interactive visual dimensionality reduction in collaboration with microbiologists has been applied in industry and academia, leading to eight joint publications and funding of two PhD studentships. 

Methodologically, a large part of her research has been centred around the use of 'interestingness' measures to support users in visually and interactively explore, extract and identify patterns of relevance within complex data. At the heart of this approach lies the human who need to understand complex data, and to address and define their analytical needs through the utilization of user centred design approaches. Sara is co-investigator in Mobilise-D and two Alan Turing Institute funded visualization projects (see Projects for more detail).  

Google Scholar profile

PhD supervision (as main supervisor)
  • Hugh Garner (start April 2018, EPSRC), Interactive visualization of temporal multi-omic data. 
  • Sarah Alsufyani (start Sep 2019), Visualization for investigation of data quality in health data.
  • Hanin Alzahrani (start Jan 2020), Improving the usability of complex biological networks through interestingness measures and interactive visualization.
  • Lucy McLaughlin (start Sep 2021), Using Shape for Uncertainty Representation in Multivariate Data.
  • Lama Alsmmahi (start Nov 2022)

Please get in touch to discuss opportunities and project ideas for PhD research with visualization focus.

Past PhD supervision
  • Dr Alexander Macquisten (2017-2022, BBSRC & Unilever R&D), thesis: Hierarchical Visualization of High Dimensional Data - Interactive Exploration of ’Omics Type Data
  • Dr Kenan Koc (2018-2022), thesis: Information Visualization Approach to Form Balanced Groups
  • Dr Halil Agin (2016-2019, Northumbria University), thesis: Extracting Knowledge from Statistical Model by Brushing in Parameter Space

Teaching

Sara is the module leader of the following modules in the School of Computing, Newcastle University

  • Complex Data Visualization (CSC8636) - MSc Data Science
  • Data Visualization and Visual Analytics (CSC3833) - BSc Computer Science (3rd year)

 

In 22/23 she was also the module leader of:

  • Data Visualization (CSC8626) - MSc Data Science
  • Data Visualization (CSC8642) - MSc Digital and Technology Solutions (Data Analytics) Degree Apprenticeship