David
Eppstein
University
of
California,
Irvine
From
Information
Visualization
to
Soap
Bubbles
Abstract: We
describe
a
form
of
network
visualization
inspired
by
the
art
of Mark
Lombardi,
in
which
networks
are
drawn
with
curved
edges
that
are evenly
spaced
around
each
vertex.
Some
of
these
drawings
greatly resemble
two-dimensional
soap
bubble
clusters,
and
we
make
this connection
more
precise
by
proving
a
mathematical
characterization
of the
networks
that
can
be
represented
by
soap
bubble
clusters.
The tools
that
we
use
to
construct
our
network
visualizations
and
to represent
graphs
as
soap
bubbles
include
circle
packings,
Möbius transformations,
Voronoi
diagrams,
and
three-dimensional
hyperbolic geometry.
Biography: David
Eppstein
is
a
professor
of
computer
science
at
the
University
of
California,
Irvine,
and
an
ACM
Fellow.
He
received
his
PhD
in
computer
science
from
Columbia
University
in
1989,
after
majoring
in
mathematics
at
Stanford
University,
and
worked
as
a
postdoctoral
researcher
at
the
Xerox
Palo
Alto
Research
Center
from
1989
to
1990
before
joining
the
UCI
faculty.
His
research
specialties
include
computational
geometry,
graph
algorithms,
and
graph
drawing.
