Visualization for Impact

The 2025 Gordon Research Conference on Visualization in Science and Education will continue the tradition of bringing together a multi-disciplinary group including researchers from the social and natural sciences, artists, technologists, journalists, educators from formal and informal settings, and others engaged in the production, study, and application of visualizations to advance and promote scientific understanding. The theme for the 2025 conference is “Visualization for Impact,” which is designed to explore an array of transdisciplinary and multi-dimensional topics such as machine learning and visualization, visualization for impact in AR/VR/XR, visualization for action and social good, visualization for education (literacy, activities, pedagogy), visualization of earth and environmental science, and visualization of uncertainty and qualitative data. The conference will explore Visualization for Impact as a means of inspiring change, influencing policies, and informing better and smarter decision-making. The Gordon Research Conference offers an ideal format for examining such topics due to its residential setting and highly collaborative atmosphere that promotes discovery of new intersections between fields. In the 2025 Gordon Research Conference on Visualization in Science and Education, speakers will apply technical, ethical, artistic, scientific, educational and philosophical lenses as to how visualizations can clarify or intensify the uncertainty inherent in natural, engineered, social, and biological data. We will also consider how the mind understands complex data and how visualizations support or obstruct mental models. We will apply the collective wisdom of speakers and participants to understand how visualizations can impact both scientific analysis and public decision making around pressing socio-scientific issues.