Aidan Slingsby giCentre, Department of Computer Science, City St George's, University of London |
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I am a Reader in the Department of Computer Science as part of the giCentre Research Centre. I am also the Taught Postgraduate Programme Director, overseeing our department's MSc programmes.
My research interests focus on the role of data visualisation in the analysis of data, particularly those that are spatial and temporal. My work involves creating, designing, applying and evaluating both static and interactive information visualisation for data exploration and analysis. I design and apply these techniques in a variety of application areas including insurance, population, human movement, animal movement and ecology. I use and combine techniques from cartography, GIS and information visualisation.
I have a background in Geography and GIS, holding a BSc (Hons) in Geology (Edinburgh), an MSc in GIS (Edinburgh) and a PhD in GIS (University College London).
Latest news
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August 2026: Congratulations to Dany Laksono for passing his PhD Viva! His thesis entitled Visual Analytics to Support Data-Driven Decision-Making in Energy Networks was supervised by Radu Jianu and me. He's written some papers and his thesis will follow. Thanks to Urska Demsar and Ali Sarvghad for examining it, Esther Mondragón for chairing it, and Advanced Infrastructure for sponsoring it and helping keep it relevant! |
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November 2025: I was at IEEE VIS in Vienna. Co-authors presented What Do LLMs Prioritise When Adapting Visualizations to User Personas? (Amir Hosseini et al; best paper in workshop), Capturing Visualization Design Rationale (Maeve Hutchinson et al) and Exposing LLM-Mediated Data Analysis: Early Visualization Designs (Jianu et al) |
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June 2025: I co-edited this Special Issue of Computers and Graphics of extended papers from the CGVC conference held as City in September 2024. There is a good mixture of work from computer graphics and information visualisation. |
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October 2024: Mai presented her paper Visualising Lived Experience: Learning from a Master and Alternative Narrative Framing at the Beliv workshop at IEEE Vis for which I am a co-author. |
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October 2024: I am co-editor for a Special Issue of Computers and Graphics with Mai Elsehaly and Kai Xu for the 42nd Computer Graphics & Visual Computing (CGVC) Conference. Deadline for submissions 19th January 2025. |
Latest publications
Laksono, D. , Jianu, R. & Slingsby, A. (2026). Steering the transition: A visual analytics approach to interactive energy scenario modeling. Computers & Graphics, article number 104747.
Hutchinson, M. , Jianu, R. , Slingsby, A. , Wood, J. & Madhyastha, P. (2025). Capturing Visualization Design Rationale. In: 2025 IEEE Visualization and Visual Analytics (VIS). 2025 IEEE Visualization and Visual Analytics (VIS), 1-7 Nov 2025, Vienna, Austria.
Hutchinson, M. , Jianu, R. , Slingsby, A. , Wood, J. & Madhyastha, P. (2025). Chart Question Answering from Real-World Analytical Narratives. In: Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 4: Student Research Workshop). Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 4: Student Research Workshop), Jul 2025 - Jul 2025, Vienna, Austria.
Current projects
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Making Visual Analytics an Integral Part of the Technological Infrastructure for Combating COVID-19: I will be working with Richard Reeve and Claire Harris at Glasgow University, designing and applying visual analytics to assist the construction of models and interpretation of the results. This project is an EPSRC-funded multi-university project led by Min Chen at Oxford University, that also involves Bangor University, City (University of London), the University of Edinburgh, the University of Glasgow, King's College London, Loughborough University, Middlesex University, the University of Nottingham, Swansea University and the University of Warwick and will be working with the Scottish COVID-19 Response Consortium. |
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The Rail Performance Model: I will be designing and implementing interactive visualisation to assist in constructing an agent-based model of train movements and to facilitate interpretation and comparison of the model results. The project is led by Risk Solutions has been successfully funded. This follows from the previous project, but involves more partners including Great Western Railway, Great Anglia and Network Rail. Whilst the previous project was a feasibility study, here we will implement a toolset to be used by the UK rail industry, including timetable design. We will be producing a number of case studies. |
Previous projects
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Agent based modelling and visualisation of the causes and consequences of knock-on delays: This project investigated the feasibility of combining agent-based modelling and highly interactive visualisation to help the railway industry understand reactionary (knock-on) delay and how to reduce it. It is feasible and a follow-up project was funded (se above). Project partners were Risk Solutions and Great Western Railway and it was funded by RSSB, the rail industry's research arm that funds applied research that is likely to improve the way the railway run. |
Teaching and supervision
I am PGT director for my department overseeing our MSc offerings. I am also Programme Director of our MSc in Data Science programme and am grateful to DataCamp for providing free accounts to our students.
I teach Principles of Data Science and Visual Analytics modules to MSc students. I supervise BSc, MSc and PhD projects. I'm open to supervising projects that relate to my research interests.
Current PhD students are Laleh Moussavi, Dany Laksono and Maeve Hutchinson.
Completed PhD students are Sarah Goodwin (2012-2015) and Rafael Henkin (2014-2018).
Examined PhD students are Susanne Bleisch (2011; City University London), Azira Ab Aziz (2015; Southampton), Andreas Hall (2016; Aalto), Vanessa MacLellan (2018; St Andrews) and Jessica Hepburn (2022; Newcastle).
Some examples and demos
Video demos on the giCentre Vimeo Channel
GlyphMaps: Population and COVID: "Glyphmaps" to support Claire Harris's (BIOSS) and Richard Reeve's (Glasgow University) COVID-modelling effort on the RAMP-VIS project (coordinated by Min Chen). More information (including a Java implementation) is here
birdGIS: Software for visually-exploring GPS data, originally designed for GPS-tracked birds.
London bike hire graphs: last 24 hours of usage compared to last week and for any day since mid-August
OAC maps: rectangular cartograms of UK demographics.
Place Survey: explore the Place Survey results for Leicestershire.
Responsive Legends for Aerial Photographs: demo of a map legend for an aerial photograph that is responsive to zoom/pan.
Tag map mashups: Mashups of point-based spatial data of British placenames
Exploring Design Decisions for Effective Information Visualization: tutorial with software.
Key publications
Slingsby, A. & Hyde, J. (2024). Zoomable Level-of-Detail ChartTables for Interpreting Probabilistic Model Outputs for Reactionary Train Delays. In: 2024 IEEE Visualization and Visual Analytics (VIS). IEEE Vis, 13-18 Oct 2024, Florida, US. presentation
Slingsby, A. , Reeve, R. & Harris, C. (2023). Gridded Glyphmaps for Supporting Spatial COVID-19 Modelling. In: 2023 IEEE Visualization and Visual Analytics (VIS). IEEE VIS: Visualization & Visual Analytics, 22-27 Oct 2023, Melbourne, Australia. 30sec video presentation Best Short Paper
Slingsby, A. & van Loon, E. (2016). Exploratory Visual Analysis for Animal Movement Ecology. Computer Graphics Forum, 35(3), pp. 471-480. DOI software video
Turkay, C., Slingsby, A. , Hauser, H. , Wood, J. & Dykes, J. (2014). Attribute Signatures: Dynamic Visual Summaries for Analyzing Multivariate Geographical Data. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 20(12), pp. 2033-2042.
Slingsby, A. , Dykes, J., Wood, J. & Radburn, R. (2014). Designing an Exploratory Visual Interface to the Results of Citizen Surveys. International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 28(10), pp. 2090-2125.
Walker, R., Slingsby, A. , Dykes, J. , Xu, K., Wood, J., Nguyen, P., Stephens, D., Wong, W. & Zheng, Y. (2013). An Extensible Framework for Provenance in Human Terrain Visual Analytics. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 19(12), pp. 2139-2148.
Slingsby, A. , Dykes, J. & Wood, J. (2011). Exploring Uncertainty in Geodemographics with Interactive Graphics. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 17(12), pp. 2545-2554.
Dykes, J., Wood, J. & Slingsby, A. (2010). Rethinking Map Legends with Visualization. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 16(6), pp. 890-899. video Honorable mention
Slingsby, A. , Wood, J. & Dykes, J. (2010). Treemap Cartography for showing Spatial and Temporal Traffic Patterns. Journal of Maps, 6(1), pp. 135-146. demo
Slingsby, A. , Dykes, J. & Wood, J. (2009). Configuring Hierarchical Layouts to Address Research Questions. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 15(6), pp. 977-984. video Honorable mention