Visual Analytics for Command, Control, and Interoperability Environments

Yang Yang, a senior electrical engineering student at Purdue, received one of six awards for best poster presentation for a summer research project in the 2011 Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURF).

Yang’s poster was titled “New Visual Analytic Features for the U.S. Coast Guard Search and Rescue Operations” and showed how visual analytics can be used to display locations and frequencies of Coast Guard search and rescue missions along the Great Lakes.  Yang did an 11-week paid research internship in VACCINE and was one of 140 students in SURF, which brings students from universities around the country in technical and scientific disciplines to conduct summer research at Purdue.  Yang was part of the Visual Analytic Summer Program (VASP), sponsored by VACCINE, and worked with VACCINE graduate students and faculty throughout the summer.

Yang started out as an accounting major and changed to engineering, and this is her first research experience.  She plans to go on to graduate school when she finishes her degree in the spring of 2012 and will pursue computer architecture.  She hopes to be employed by a micro-controller or embedded system company initially but may return to obtain her PhD and go on to teach or pursue academic research.