Radu Jianu

Dr Radu Jianu is part of the giCentre, an internationally recognised UK research group in data visualisation and visual analytics. He received his PhD in Computer Science from Brown University (USA), held research positions in the US, and joined City in 2016. His research spans data visualisation and analytics, human–AI collaboration, and user-centred design, with over 60 peer-reviewed publications (IEEE TVCG, CGF, CHI, CG&A). He lectures in the Department of Computer Science at City St George’s, University of London, where he teaches programming, human–computer interaction, and AI-enhanced workflows for HCI design.

Research Focus

My research develops visual analytics solutions for real-world problems in epidemiology, digital health, and decarbonisation planning. I have experience across the full design process—from visual data analysis task modelling and user research to understand analytical needs, through rapid design exploration and agile prototyping, to user studies that evaluate interface effectiveness. I create user-centred visual analytics systems that couple technical innovation with a grounded understanding of how analysts work in their domains.

My recent research examines the intersection of visual analytics and generative AI, exploring how Large Language Models (LLMs) can enhance analytical reasoning and communication. I investigate how LLMs can (i) let users express complex analytical requirements directly in visual analytic interfaces, (ii) capture and interpret analytic provenance—recording how users reason and interact—to create transparent analytic narratives for reflection and communication, and (iii) support a richer human–AI partnership by using visualisation as a shared medium for explanation, reasoning, and storytelling across diverse audiences.

Publications

  • Jianu, R., Slingsby, A., Laksono, D., & Okoe, M. (2025). VisUnit: Literate Visualisation Studies Assembled from Reusable Test-Suites. Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–15.
  • Jianu, R., Silva, N., Rodriguez, N., Blascheck, T., Schreck, T., & Weiskopf, D. (2025). Gaze-Aware Visualisation: Design Considerations and Research Agenda. Computer Graphics Forum.
  • Elshehaly, M., Jianu, R., Slingsby, A., Andrienko, G., & Andrienko, N. (2025). Designing for Collaboration: Visualisation to Enable Human–LLM Analytical Partnership. IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications, 45(5), 107–116.
  • Jianu, R., Hutchinson, M., Andrienko, N., Andrienko, G., Elshehaly, M., & Slingsby, A. (2025). Mind-Mapping Data Analysis with LLMs: From Vision to First Steps. In Computer Graphics & Visual Computing (CGVC) 2025.
  • Jianu, R., Hutchinson, M., Andrienko, N., Andrienko, G., Elshehaly, M., & Slingsby, A. (2025). Exposing LLM-Mediated Data Analysis: Early Visualization Designs. In 1st Workshop on GenAI, Agents, and the Future of VIS (co-located with IEEE VIS 2025).
  • Hutchinson, M., Jianu, R., Slingsby, A., & Madhyastha, P. (2025, Aug). Foundation model assisted visual analytics: Opportunities and Challenges. Computers & Graphics, 130, 104246. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cag.2025.104246.
  • Hosseini, A., Wood, J., Slingsby, A., Jianu, R., & Elshehaly, M. (2025, Sept). What Do LLMs Prioritise When Adapting Visualizations to User Personas? In Visual Analytics in Healthcare (VAHC) 2025 — IEEE VIS Workshop.
  • Laksono, D., Jianu, R., & Slingsby, A. (2025, Sept). Interactive Visual Analytics for Local Decarbonisation Planning: Empowering Policy-Aligned Scenario Exploration. In Computer Graphics & Visual Computing (CGVC) 2025. The Eurographics Association.
  • Laksono, D., Slingsby, A., & Jianu, R. (2024). Gridded-glyphmaps for supporting Geographic Multicriteria Decision Analysis. EuroVis 2024 — Short Papers.
  • Hutchinson, M., Jianu, R., Slingsby, A., & Madhyastha, P. (2024, Sept). LLM-Assisted Visual Analytics: Opportunities and Challenges. CGVC 2024. https://doi.org/10.2312/cgvc.20241237.
  • Gonen, T., Xing, Y., Turkay, C., Abdul-Rahman, A., Jianu, R., Fang, H., Freeman, E., Vidal, F. P., & Chen, M. (2023). Visual Analytics-Based Search–Analyze–Forecast Framework for Epidemiological Time-Series Data. In IEEE VIS Workshop on Visualization for Pandemic and Emergency Responses (Vis4PandEmRes 2023), 1–7. IEEE.
  • Hutchinson, M., Slingsby, A., Jianu, R., & Madhyastha, P. (2023). Towards Visualisation Specifications from Multilingual Natural Language Queries Using Large Language Models. EuroVis 2023 — Posters, 77–79.
  • Dykes, J., Abdul-Rahman, A., Archambault, D., Bach, B., Borgo, R., Chen, M., … Xu, K. (2022). Visualization for Epidemiological Modelling: Challenges, Solutions, Reflections and Recommendations. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 380(2233), 20210299.
  • Chen, M., et al. (2022). RAMPVIS: Answering the Challenges of Building Visualisation Capabilities for Large-Scale Emergency Responses. Epidemics, 39, 100569.
  • Brown, V., Turkay, C., & Jianu, R. (2020). Dissecting Visual Analytics: Comparing Frameworks for Interpreting and Modelling Observed Visual Analytics Behavior. EuroVis 2020 — Short Papers, 37–41. Best Short Paper Award.
  • Silva, N., Blascheck, T., Jianu, R., Rodrigues, N., Weiskopf, D., Raubal, M., & Schreck, T. (2019). Eye Tracking Support for Visual Analytics Systems: Foundations, Current Applications, and Research Challenges. Proceedings of the 11th ACM Symposium on Eye Tracking Research & Applications (ETRA 2019), 1–10.
  • Katner, K., & Jianu, R. (2019, May). The Effectiveness of Nudging in Commercial Settings and Impact on User Trust. Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–6.
  • Kanai, J. M., Grant, R., & Jianu, R. (2018). Cities on and off the map: A bibliometric assessment of urban globalisation research. Urban Studies, 55(12), 2569–2585.
  • Okoe, M., Jianu, R., & Kobourov, S. G. (2018). Node-link or adjacency matrices: Old question, new insights. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 25(10), 2940–2952.
  • Borgo, R., Abdul-Rahman, A., Bach, B., Jianu, R., et al. (2017). Crowdsourcing for information visualization: Promises and pitfalls. In Evaluation in the Crowd — Crowdsourcing and Human-Centered Experiments (Dagstuhl Seminar 15481, Revised Contributions). Springer.
  • Okoe, M., Jianu, R., & Kobourov, S. (2017). Revisited experimental comparison of node-link and matrix representations. International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2017), 287–302. Best Paper Award.
  • Alam, S., & Jianu, R. (2017). A Data Model and Task Space for Data of Interest (DOI) Eye-Tracking Analyses. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG), 2017.
  • Sayeed Alam, and Radu Jianu (2016). Analyzing Eye-Tracking Information in Visualization and Data Space: from Where on the Screen to What on the Screen. In TVCG, 2016.
  • Angela Laird, Mark Riedel, Mershack Okoe, Radu Jianu, KL Ray, SB Eickhoff, SM Smith, PT Fox, MT Sutherland (2016). Heterogeneous fractionation profiles of meta-analytic coactivation networks. In Neuroimage, 2016.
  • Renata Pinheiro, Nipesh Pradhananga, Radu Jianu, and Waleed Orabi (2016). Eye-tracking technology for construction safety: A feasibility study. In 33rd International Symposium on Automation and Robotics in Construction., 2016.
  • Mershack Okoe, and Radu Jianu (2015). GraphUnit: Evaluating Interactive Graph Visualizations Using Crowdsourcing. In Eurovis2015, 2015.
  • Sayeed Alam, and Radu Jianu (2015). What Are They Doing? : Real-time Analysis of Eye-Tracking Data. In IEEE VIS 2015, poster track, 2015.
  • Mershack Okoe, and Radu Jianu (2015). Ecological Validity in Quantitative User Studies – a Case Study in Graph Evaluation. In IEEE VIS 2015, poster track, 2015.
  • Steven Gomez, Radu Jianu, Ryan Cabeen, Hua Guo, and David H. Laidlaw (2015). Fauxvea: Crowdsourcing Gaze Estimates for Visualization Analysis Tasks. In IEEE TVCG, 2015 (in review, minor revision requested).
  • Nahid Ferdous & Radu Jianu (2014). Using Pupil Size as an Indicator for Task Difficulty in Data Visualization. IEEE VIS 2014 Poster Program. Honorable Mention.
  • Radu Jianu, Adrian Rusu, Yifan Hu, and Douglas Taggart (2014). How to Display Group Information on Node-Link Diagrams: an Evaluation. In IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG), 2014.
  • Mershack Okoe, Sayeed Safayet, and Radu Jianu (2014). GraphUnit: Evaluating Interactive Graph Visualization Using CrowdSourcing. In Eurovis2014 and Computer Graphics Forum Journal (CGF) 2014.
  • Mershack Okoe and Radu Jianu (2014). A Gaze-enabled Graph Visualization to Improve Graph Reading Tasks. In IEEE VIS 2014 poster program 2014.
  • Sayeed Safayet, and Radu Jianu (2014). Data of Interest (DOI)-Based Analysis of Eye-Tracker Data for Interactive Visualizations. In IEEE VIS 2014 poster program 2014.
  • Adrian Rusu and Radu Jianu (2013). Combining Scientific and Information Visualization Artifacts for Complex System Diagnosis. In Proc. of the 17th International Conference on Information Visualisation (IV), , 2013.
  • Mershack Okoe, Sayeed Safayet, and Radu Jianu (2013). Using Eye-Tracking as Interactive Input Enhances Graph Visualization. In IEEE Visualization 2013 Poster Compendium 2013.
  • Radu Jianu and David H. Laidlaw (2013). What Google Maps can do for biomedical data dissemination:examples and a design study. In BMC Research Notes vol. 6 2013.
  • Steven R. Gomez, Radu Jianu, Hua Guo, Caroline Ziemkiewicz, and David H. Laidlaw (2012). Different Strokes for Different Folks: Visual Presentation Design Between Disciplines. In IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG), VisWeek 2012, 2012.
  • Radu Jianu and David H. Laidlaw (2012). An Evaluation of How Small User Interface Changes Can Improve Scientists’ Analytic Strategies. In Symposium on Human Factors in Computing (CHI) 2012.
  • Radu Jianu, Wenjin Zhou, Ryan Cabeen, Daniel Dickstein, and David H. Laidlaw (2012). Visualizing tractography metrics of cortical-connectivity integrity in diffusion imaging. In ISMRM 2012.
  • J Ericson, M Painter, S Davis, C Laplace, G Hyatt, H Paik, K Rothamel, R Cruse, G Doran, T Heng, N Asinovski, Ortiz-A Lopes, A Ergun, D Gray, E Wakamatsu, J Hill, M Mingueneau, D Cipoletta, H Yoshida, C Benoist, D Mathis, N Cohen, E Kim, P Brennan, L Lynch, M Brenner, J Costello, JJ Collins, D Blair, M Dustin, J Knell, E Yang, A Best, L Shaw, A Doedens, A Goldrath, S Shinton, Y Zhou, R Hardy, V Jojic, S Mostafavi, D Koller, Radu Jianu, David H. Laidlaw, N Bezman, J Sun, Y Zhu, D Hendricks, Y Kamimura, G Min-Oo, M Morvan, T Nabekura, V Lam, C Kim, L Lanier, M Greter, J Helft, A Chow, M Bogunovic, A Mortha, J Price, D Hashimoto, J Miller, P Sathe, A Chudnovskiy, Y Lavin, J Idoyaga, M Merad, E Gautier, C Jakubzick, D' J Angelo, G Randolph, T Shay, A Regev, R Gazit, Rossi D, T Kreslawsky, Bohmer H von, A Bellemare-Pelletier, K Elpek, L Spelv, A Fletcher, D Malhotra, V Cremasco, S Turley, F Kim, TN Rao, A Wagers, and Immunological Genome Project (2012). Identification of transcriptional regulators in the mouse immune system. In Consortium biology in immunology: the perspective from the Immunological Genome Project, 2012.
  • Emmanuel L Gautier, Tal Shay, Jennifer Miller, Melanie Greter, Claudia Jakubzick, Stoyan Ivanov, Julie Helft, Andrew Chow, Kutlu G Elpek, Simon Gordonov, Amin R Mazloom, Avi Ma'ayan, Wei-Jen Chua, Ted H Hansen, Shannon J Turley, Miriam Merad, Gwendalyn J Randolph, David H. Laidlaw, and Radu Jianu (2012). Gene-expression profiles and transcriptional regulatory pathways that underlie the identity and diversity of mouse tissue macrophages. In Nature Immunology , 2012.
  • D Malhotra, Anne L Fletcher, J Astarita, V Lukacs-Kornek, P Tayalia, SF Gonzalez, KG Elpek, SK Chang, K Knoblich, ME Hemler, MB Brenner, MC Carroll, DJ Mooney, SJ Turley, The Immunological Genome Project Consortium the, Y Zhou, SA Shinton, RR Hardy, NA Bezman, JC Sun, CC Kim, LL Lanier, J Miller, M Merad, AL Fletcher, A Bellemare-Pelletier, K Narayan, K Sylvia, J Kang, R Gazit, B Garrison, DJ Rossi, V Jojic, D Koller, Radu Jianu, David H. Laidlaw, J Costello, J Collins, N Cohen, P Brennan, T Shay, A Regev, F Kim, TN Rao, A Wagers, EL Gautier, C Jakubzick, GJ Randolph, P Monach, AJ Best, J Knell, A Goldrath, T Heng, T Kreslavsky, M Painter, D Mathis, and C Benoist (2012). Transcriptional profiling of stroma from inflamed and resting lymph nodes defines immunological hallmarks. In Nature Immunology , 2012.
  • Jennifer C Miller, Brian D Brown, Tal Shay, Emmanuel L Gautier, Vladimir Jojic, Ariella Cohain, Gaurav Pandey, Marylene Leboeuf, Kutlu G Elpek, Julie Helft, Daigo Hashimoto, Andrew Chow, Jeremy Price, Melanie Greter, Milena Bogunovic, Angelique Bellemare-Pelletier, Paul S Frenette, Gwendalyn J Randolph, Shannon J Turley, Miriam Merad, David H. Laidlaw, and Radu Jianu (2012). Deciphering the transcriptional network of the dendritic cell lineage. In Nature Immunology , 2012.
  • Cagatay Demiralp, Radu Jianu and David H. Laidlaw (2011). Exploring brain connectivity with two-dimensional maps. In New Developments in the Visualization and Processing of Tensor Fields. 2011.
  • Amalia Rusu, Andrew Fabian, Radu Jianu and Adrian Rusu (2011). Using the Gestalt Principle of Closure to Alleviate the Edge Crossing Problem in Graph Drawings. In 15th International Conference on Information Visualisation (IV), 2011.
  • Radu Jianu and David H. Laidlaw (2011). Guiding Visualization Users Towards Improved Analytic Strategies Using Small Interface Changes. In IEEE Visualization 2011 Poster Compendium, 2011.
  • Radu Jianu, Cagatay Demiralp, & David H. Laidlaw (2010). Exploring brain connectivity with two-dimensional neural maps. IEEE Visualization 2010 Poster Compendium. Best Poster Award.
  • Steven Gomez, Radu Jianu, and David H. Laidlaw (2010). A Fiducial-Based Tangible User Interface for White Matter Tractography. In Proceedings of International Symposium on Visual Computing '10, 2010.
  • Radu Jianu, Cagatay Demiralp, and David H. Laidlaw (2010). Visualizing and exploring tractograms via two-dimensional connectivity maps. In Proceedings of ISMRM'10, 2010.
  • Radu Jianu and David H. Laidlaw (2010). Visualizing Gene Co-Expression as Google Maps. In Proceedings of International Symposium on Visual Computing '10, 2010.
  • Radu Jianu and David H. Laidlaw (2010). Visualizing Protein Interaction Networks as Google Maps. In IEEE Visualization 2010 Poster Compendium, 2010.
  • Radu Jianu, Cagatay Demiralp, and David H. Laidlaw (2009). Exploring 3D DTI Fiber Tracts with Linked 2D Representations. In IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG) 2009.
  • R. Jianu, K. Yu, L. Cao, V. Nguyen, A. Salomon and D.H. Laidlaw (2009). Visual integration of quantitative proteomic data, pathways and protein interactions. In IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG) 2009.
  • R. Jianu, A. Rusu, A.J. Fabian and D.H. Laidlaw (2009). A Coloring Solution to the Edge Crossing Problem. In Proceedings of the 2009 13th International Conference on Information Visualisation. 2009.
  • V. Nguyen, L. Cao, J.T. Lin, N. Hung, A. Ritz, K. Yu, R. Jianu, S.P. Ulin, B.J. Raphael, D.H. Laidlaw and A. Salomon (2009). A new approach for quantitative phosphoproteomic dissection of signaling pathways applied to T cell receptor activation. In Molecular and Cellular Proteomics 2009.
  • T.S. Heng, M. W Painter and Immunological Genome Project Consortium (2008). The Immunological Genome Project: networks of gene expression in immune cells. In Nature Immunology Oct. 2008.
  • K. Yu, L. Cao, R. Jianu, R. Park, C. Gatsonis, D.H. Laidlaw and A. Salomon (2007). A software suite to expedite the study of cell signaling pathway: automated acquisition, organization and annotation. In 55 th ASMS Conference Proceedings. 2007.
  • A. Rusu, C. Santiago and R. Jianu (2007). Real-time Interactive Visualization of Information Hierarchies. In 11th International Conference on Information Visualization, 2007.
  • M.Kostandov, J. Schwertfeger, O.C Jenkins, R. Jianu and others (2007). Robot gaming and learning using augmented reality. In ACM SIGGRAPH 2007, Poster track. 2007.
  • A. Rusu, R. Jianu, C. Santiago and C. Clement (2006). An Experimental Study on Algorithms for Drawing Binary Trees. In Proceedings of the 2006 Asia-Pacific Symposium on Information Visualisation 2006.
  • A. Rusu, C. Clement and R. Jianu (2006). Adaptive Binary-Trees Visualization with Respect to User-Specified Quality Measures. In 10th Conference on Information Visualization, 2006.
  • R. Jianu, A. Salomon and D.H. Laidlaw (2006). Visualizing Phosphorilation Experiments Data in the Context of Known Protein Interactions. In IEEE InfoVis '06, Poster Compendium, 2006.
  • M, Kostandov, R. Jianu, W. Zhou, and T. Moscovich (2006). Interactive Layered Character Animation in Immersive Virtual Environments. In ACM SIGGRAPH 2006, Poster Track. 2006.
  • R. Jianu, A. Rusu, V. Anand and K. Hansen (2004). Area efficient visualization of Web Data. In Proc. 5th International Conference on Internet Computing 2004.