The Antarctica Dilemma

Building on a passion for both computer science, sociology and art, Julia received her Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill with Honors. She went on to compete her Master of Science in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 2007, focusing on communication and collaboration in online communities.

She joined IBM Research - Almaden in 2006, specializing in creating visualizations for large datasets of unstructured information. She went on to design and built innovative user interfaces and applications for a wide range of domains including healthcare, finance and government. In 2008 Julia joined the USER (User Sciences and Experience Research) group at Almaden, focusing on social and collaborative software. Her current work is focused on how to visualize and make sense of the massive amounts of data from social networking sources. She is excited by the prospect of cleanly and concisely presenting social information as to help people all over the world more effectively.

She has been featured in two internationally aired IBM television commercials about her work, speaks regularly at universities about her passion for collaboration, and has come to love giving Ingite talks. In her spare time she runs, backpacks through the state parks of California, and practices yoga. She is a certified wine dilettante.

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