News

1.4 2024  I am excited to be member of the program committee of the International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization 2025. 

3.3.2025 Our paper Viewpoint Optimization for 3D Graph Drawing co-authored with Simon van Wageningen and Alexandru Telea was accepted for presentation at EuroVIS 2025 and consequent publication at TVCG. In this work we tackle the problem of automatically finding high-quality viewpoints for 3D graph drawings. We propose and evaluate strategies based on sampling, gradient descent, and evolutionary-inspired meta-heuristics.

22.1.2025 Utrecht University has published an article about the joint efforts of Women in Information and Computing Sciences (WICS) and ICS Diversity Committee to increase the representation of women and other underrepresented groups in academia, create mentroship opportunities and encourage a more inclusive culture within our department.

28.11.2024 I am thrilled to have received the Diversity and Inclusion Initiative Award together with Anja Volk and Maartje de Graaf! It is so important to feel that our efforts to make our Department a more diverse and inclusive place are recognized and valued! This award not only provides financial support to continue our actions but also strengthens our motivation to keep working on this goal! 

26.11.2024 Listen to my podcast-interview to the Atomen Podcast, where Florian Helinski talks to scientists from the exact subjects without any knowledge of exact subjects. It was such a refreshing and motivating experience to discuss my research with Florian, striving to explain complex research questions in a simple and grounded way, making them accessible to the general public.

16.9.2024 I gave an invited lecture with the topic Visualization of Opinion Spaces at the PhD school of the 32nd International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization that this year took place in Vienna. (YouTube video)

19.12.2023 Our article  Uncertainty in Humanities Network Visualization will soon appear in Frontiers in Communication. This is a follow-up article on the Dagstuhl seminar "Network visualization in the humanities" that I co-organized a few years back. 

17.12.2023 I am excited to be member of the program commette of EuroVis'24: 26th EG conference on visualization, short paper track 

1.5.2023 I gave an invited talk on my project European value maps at the student conference Exec(ut).  (You tube video) 

17.2.2023 UU published an article about European Value Maps

Profile

My name is Tamara Mchedlidze. I am Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Utrecht University and member of the Visualization and Graphics Group. My research interests span multiple issues and methodologies around Network Visualization. I design, theoretically analyze, experimentally and empirically evaluate algorithms for network visualization and investigate their applications in practice, in particular in Humanities. From a theoretical perspective, I study network visualization algorithms with provable guarantees, i.e. algorithms that produce node-link diagrams, for which some quality guarantees can be formally proven. In the experimental part of my research, I attempt to apply general optimization techniques to solve computationally hard network visualization problems. I am also interested in using machine learning approaches to improve network visualization algorithms. In the empirical part of my research, I am investigating how basic principles in cognitive psychology (such as Gestalt rules of perception) translate to network visualization. Finally, in collaboration with Philosophers and Argumentation scientists, I investigate how to model and visualize multidimentional opinion spaces resulting from collection of opinions on large and complex debates.

Research Interests

• Network Visualization Algorithms
• Theoretical Analysis of Algorithms 
• Experimental Evaluation of Network Visualization Algorithms
• Emphirical Evaluation of Network Visualization Algorithms
• Machine Learning for Improved Visualization Algorithms
• Visualization of Argument and Opinion Networks

Research Areas

• Graph Drawing
• Algorithmic Graph Theory
• Computational Geometry
• Information Visualisation
• Visual Perception and Cognition
• Digital Humanities

Spellings of my second name

"Mchedlidze" is the closest English spelling of my Georgian second name  , which is transcripted to english as . I use this spelling in my publications. Spelling "Mtsentlintze" comes from Greek transcription  .