As a member of the SFB-TRR 161 graduate school, I was given the opportunity to take part in a research stay as part of the internalization program. I am deeply grateful to the SFB-TRR 161 and the Deutsche Forschungsgesellschaft (DFG) for providing this opportunity and the funding for it. I especially want to express my gratitude to Prof. Dr. Daniel Keim (SFB-TRR 161 project A03) for giving me the opportunity to leave his research group for the time of the research stay and to Prof. Dr. Tim Dwyer for letting me stay in his group. I also want to thank Prof. Dr. Falk Schreiber (SFB-TRR 161 project D04), who established the contact with Prof. Dwyer at Monash, helped me with the bureaucracy prior to the trip, and provided lots of guidance at Monash during his visit. Lastly, I am very grateful to Claudia Widmann for helping me a lot with the organization of this stay and with the administrative paperwork and funding.
The research stay took place in the group of Prof Dr. Tim Dwyer at Monash University in Melbourne in the time between November 11, 2024 and January 31, 2025. The Embodied Visualisation group, led by Prof. Dwyer, investigates how new display and interaction technologies can be used to facilitate data analysis and to improve informed decision-making. They further try to reduce the barriers between people and data with a special focus on accessibility. My own research targets the use of immersive technology, such as virtual and augmented reality displays, but also large display walls, to improve the visual analysis of network data. Thus, the group of Prof. Dwyer with their expertise were a perfect match regarding my research topic.
During my stay, I lived close-by the Monash Campus Clayton, where the lab of Prof. Dwyer is located. By public transportation, it takes around 1.5h from the center of Melbourne to Clayton, making it highly beneficial to live in Clayton. The lab is the workplace of all PhD students and also serves as an environment for user studies and immersive application development, providing direct insight into the research of the group and giving the opportunity for many interesting discussions. Every Thursday, there was a lab meeting to discuss the current progress, challenges, and other aspects. Every second of these meetings, all associated supervisors (i.e. professors and post-docs) were also attending, while on the other occasions, only the PhD students took part. During one of the meetings with all supervisors attending, I was given the opportunity to present my previous and recent research and to discuss it with the plenum.
I used the time during my research stay to work on a survey paper covering my topic with the title “Visual Network Analysis in Immersive Environments: A Survey”. Survey papers typically require a very high level of effort and work hours, making this project suitable to address during a research stay aside from the usual environment and duties. Further, Prof. Dwyer and Prof. Schreiber are both co-authors of this paper, and the research stay at Monash provided the opportunity to talk about the paper in person to get invaluable feedback. The constant feedback from my co-authors and the productive work environment allowed me to complete this paper and the accompanying website on time, filling a large gap in the landscape of immersive analytics and literature surveys.
Apart from the survey paper, I established new collaborations and paper ideas, which will be beneficial for the remaining time of my PhD and beyond.
The research was highly fruitful and beneficial for both my research and my personal experience. Besides new collaborations and paper submissions, I was fortunate enough to meet lots of new people, many of whom became true friends. The new perspectives and experiences of working in another research group in a foreign country were highly advantageous for me and will remain helpful for the rest of my career. Further, I am happy that I could also bring new perspectives and expertise to the Embodied Visualisation group at Monash. I want to thank again everyone who made this research stay possible.
