Christopher M. Collins

I am a PhD candidate in computer science at the University of Toronto. I am affiliated with the Computational Linguistics group & Knowledge Media Design Institute at the University of Toronto and the InnoVis Lab at the University of Calgary. My thesis research, investigating interactive visualizations of language, is supervised by Gerald Penn and Sheelagh Carpendale.

In the summer of 2007, I worked with Michelle Zhou's team as a graduate research intern in the Intelligent Multimedia Interaction group at IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center.

I received my M.Sc. in the area of Computational Linguistics from University of Toronto in 2004.  My current research focus is inter-disciplinary, combining computational linguistics and information visualization.  I am currently in my final year of PhD studies, investigating interactive visualizations of linguistic data with a focus on convergence and coordination of multiple views of data to provide enhanced insight.  I have developed various methods for generating, reading, and comparing visual summaries of document thematic content for everyday users and data analysts.  Recent publications include a new method for revealing relationships amongst visualizations, and a system for exposing the uncertainty in statistical natural language systems.  I have recently embarked on a study of visualization use in a team of machine translation researchers and plans to continue collaboration with language engineers to provide them with an enhanced ability to analyse and improve their algorithms.

I am also involved in the academic community. For several years I held various positions in the Graduate Students' Union at the University of Toronto -- from council member to President. I have also served on the University Affairs Board of the University of Toronto, as well as a member and the Chair of the Hart House Board of Stewards. Since late 2006 I have been visiting the University of Calgary, and my involvement has been much reduced as I focus on completing my thesis research.

I have been actively involved in education over my graduate studies. I have served as a teaching assistant in many courses, several times receiving student evaulations ranking in the top 5% overall. I have been working to learn to be a great teacher, as well as researcher. To meet those goals, I have enrolled in professional development courses at both the University of Toronto and University of Calgary. Most recently I have been taking the University Teaching Certificate and Reseach Outreach Program at U of C. I am also interested in the future of the public university system in Canada. Our universities must not be only degree mills; they must provide a holistic and engaging student experience, and be a contributor to the communities in which they are situated. To that end, I have been active in the areas of curriculum reform, education funding, and student experience enhancement, both as a member of the student union, and as a representative of the University of Toronto to the Ontario Review of Post-Secondary Education (the "Rae Review").

In my spare time, I enjoy hatha yoga, learning new languages (currently working on Mandarin), and hanging out with my partner Dan.