Frank Elavsky
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PhD'ing at CMU HCII and consulting for accessibilty R&D.
Research Area
To break down barriers that exclude people from data work and data interfaces, I research methods that improve greater adoption of accessibility practices, engineer tools and systems that improve inclusive practitioner work and outcomes, and contribute to global technology standards bodies. I critically examine ways that sociotechnical systems exclude people with disabilities while also building and making. My research seeks to intervene in the technological spaces where practitioners produce inaccessible data visualizations, interfaces, and experiences in order to include and empower everyone with information.
Positions
Education
Advised by Dominik Moritz and Patrick Carrington.
Thesis: (In progress).
Member of the Data Interaction Group and AXLE Lab.
GPA: 3.88 / 4.0, Magna Cum Laude
Advanced coursework on data visualization, video game physics, digital humanities archives, and software interfaces.
GPA: 3.88 / 4.0, Magna Cum Laude
Advanced coursework on post-colonialism, trauma theory, feminist semiotics, secularism, and the philosophy of play.
Publications [Interactive Version]
Conference
Book Chapter
Micro-paper
Poster
Patents
Notable Awards
In partnership with internal individuals and teams at Adobe, we were awarded an internal grant for our work to make Adobe's data visualization tooling and analytical products and services more accessible for blind and low vision data workers.
In partnership with Quansight Labs, I am listed as key personnel on a 2-year CZI EOSS 6 grant for making the Bokeh python visualization library more accessible. I am the leading consultant, advisor, auditor, and architect for the accessibility efforts of this grant.
I was recognized on the shortlist (of 3 out of 20k members) for my work with the Data Visualization Society's community, fostering a space for folks to learn and connect regarding accessibility.
I was given awards for my outstanding review contributions to CHI 2022, 2023, and 2024 (a hat trick!).
My Masses in the Stellar Graveyard interactive data experience won NASA's High Energy Astrophysics Archive Research Center (HEASARC) Image of the Week Award.
My Masses in the Stellar Graveyard interactive data experience won Kantar's longlist.
My Quantifying Career Hot Streaks interactive data experience won Kantar's longlist.
Barry Barish's lecture prominently featured my figure on electromagnetic and gravitational wave detections of compact stellar objects.
Recurring, 60% scholarship awarded to a select group of students who participate in a conversation with the Academic Dean on a semesterly graduate-level humanities topic.
Scholarship awarded to the top 10% performing students each year.
Scholarship and training expenses provided for students, scholars, and practitioners involved in organizing efforts in their communities.
Grant awarded to active community organizers with promising projects.
Mentoring
Industry Professional Mentoring
Carnegie Mellon UniversityI mentored an industry professional who is working on making an infinite canvas tool, tldraw, more accessible. "Creative support tools" (CSTs) are notoriously hard to make accessible as they are largely visual-only. We explored the problem space, ideated, and developed prototypes.
Mentored:
- Taha Hassan
Undergraduate Mentoring
Carnegie Mellon UniversitySemester-long mentorships on the following topics: accessibility, machine-learning design, user interface design, software engineering, graph theory, assistive technology research.
Mentored:
- Ihita Mandal
- Chieri Nnadozie
- Iman Ouzzan
Graduate Student Mentoring
Carnegie Mellon UniversityI mentored a graduate student during their research-focused Master's in CS at CMU, exploring the space of machine learning descriptions of visualizations.
Mentored:
- Ihita Mandal
Undergraduate Mentoring
Northwestern UniversityI mentored an undergraduate student on two projects for the PI Sera Young, cleaning and visualizing refugee resettlement data as well as visualizing a world map of Young's Household Water Insecurity Experiences (HWISE) sites.
Mentored:
- Jun Hwa Lee (now at Meta)
Graduate Student Mentoring
Northwestern UniversityTaught graduate students in earth and astrophysical sciences professional, data-intensive skills for two summers. I personally worked with and mentored one PhD student fellow on projects related to their research.
Mentored:
- Boris Rösler (2017 and 2018 PhD Fellow)
Talks, Courses, Workshops [Interactive Version]
Software Structures of Assistive Technologies
Accessibility and Play
Data Visualization and Accessibility
Disability and Data Equity
Human-centered Machine Learning
Advanced Data Visualization with D3
Data Navigator
Philosophy of Design
Accessible Research
Chartability
Inclusive Data Experiences
Fireside Chat: Charts in Context
Fireside Chat: Accessibility in Data Visualization
Data Science Best Practices: Accessibility
Are Your Data Visualizations Excluding People?
Advanced Data Visualization and Accessibility on the Web
Visualizations for Multi-Dimensional Data
High-Density Model Visualization
Introduction to JavaScript
Introduction to Web Technology
Introduction to Visualization
How to Make Scientific Figures
Service
- Associate Editor (2024 - Present), Journal of Interaction and Visualization (JoVI). Honored to be the first student editor!
- Peer Reviewer (2022 - Present), Reviewed a running total of 18 papers across ACM CHI, UIST, IEEE VIS, TAccess, and EuroVis. Current reviews:submissions ratio of 6:1.
- W3C Invited Expert (2021 - Present), Accessible Internet Rich Applications (ARIA) Working Group, a working group for web accessibility standards.
- Co-founder and organizer (2020 - Present), DataVizA11y, a worldwide group of practitioners focused on accessibility in visualization.
- Student Volunteer (2023), ACM Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) conference in Pittsburgh, PA.
- Volunteer Consultant (2020), City of San Francisco's Data Team, helped with a project to make COVID-19 dashboards more accessible.
- Community organizer (2012 - 2016), various, organizing at the local and institutional level for housing, safety, and student rights issues.
References
Dominik Moritz
Assistant Professor, Human-Computer Interaction Institute
Carnegie Mellon University
Patrick Carrington
Assistant Professor, Human-Computer Interaction Institute
Carnegie Mellon University
Chris DeMartini
Senior Director, Data Experience Team
Visa
Gabriel Hankins
Assistant Professor of English
Clemson University
Vetria Byrd
Assistant Professor of Computer Graphics Technology
Purdue University