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John Alexis Guerra Gómez
Information Visualization · AI-Assisted Development ·
Accessibility
Summary
Senior technologist with 23+ years bridging research and production,
specializing in information visualization, AI-assisted development, and
accessibility. Built visualization tools deployed in Xerox's healthcare
fraud detection products and internal analytics at Yahoo. Co-founded an
accessibility startup (10+ international awards, patented technology). PhD
in Computer Science (HCI/Visualization) from the University of Maryland.
30+ publications at CHI, IEEEVIS, AVI. Currently teaching AI-Assisted
Software Engineering at Northeastern University.
Skills
Research: Information Visualization · Accessibility ·
HCI · Machine Learning · D3.js · Vega-Lite · Observable · User
Experience · ReactiveWidgets.org
Engineering: AI Assisted Coding · System Architecture
· Web Development · HTML5/CSS/JS · React · SQL/NoSQL · Python · Agentic
Coding
Education: Education · Public Speaking ·
Entrepreneurship · Courses · Agile · Design Thinking · Innovation
Professional Experience
Northeastern University, Khoury College of Computer Sciences — Bay Area
/ Oakland
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Designed and taught courses to hundreds of students across Web
Development, Database Management Systems, Software Engineering, Data
Visualization, and
AI-Assisted Software Engineering (Vibe Coding).
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Conducting applied research in information visualization and
accessibility as member of the
Khoury Visualization Lab.
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Created
Paper Explorers
— interactive tools using sentence embeddings and dimensionality
reduction to explore academic papers across 8 major conferences.
UC Berkeley, School of Information — online Master in Data Science
(MIDS)
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Co-designed and delivered the data visualization curriculum (W209),
reaching hundreds of remote students across 7 semesters.
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Completely redesigned
course materials
covering D3, Vega-Lite, and Tableau with Visual Analytics theory.
Yahoo Labs — Sunnyvale, CA
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Built internal visualization tools for navigating large photo
repositories and exploring organizational structures, used
company-wide.
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Four papers accepted at CHI 2016 and AVI 2016. Created visual
analytics for dozens of complex internal datasets.
Xerox PARC — Palo Alto, CA
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Built
Network Explorer, a visual analytics tool for networks with hundreds of thousands of
nodes — deployed in Xerox's healthcare fraud detection product.
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Integrated visualizations into 3 production products and built
dashboards used across the organization.
DUTO — Pereira, Colombia
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Co-founded accessibility startup. Co-created
IRIS, a patented system
allowing blind children to perceive images through touch. Led all
software development for 10 years.
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Winner of
10+ international entrepreneurship awards. Also co-created BTactile,
indexing 5000+ tactile graphics worldwide.
Universidad de los Andes — Bogotá, Colombia
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Redesigned and delivered Visual Analytics and Web Development courses
across 8 semesters. Published research in large-scale data
visualization, network visualization, and accessibility.
Selected Projects
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Navio — Open-source
visualization widget for exploring large datasets (npm, 108 stars)
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Reactive Widgets
— Reusable visualization components (IEEEVIS 2024,
npm)
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US Election Results
— Scrollytelling visualization of presidential elections 2000–2024
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force-in-a-box
— D3 force layout for clustered networks (78 stars, 221 weekly npm
downloads)
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UMAP Playground
— Interactive dimensionality reduction in the browser
Selected Publications
Guerra-Gomez, J.A. (2024). "Towards Reusable and Reactive
Widgets for Information Visualization Research and Dissemination."
IEEE VIS 2024.
Zuniga-Zabala, M.F., Guerra-Gomez, J.A. (2022). "Lessons
Learned Building Low-Cost DIY Tactile Graphics and Conducting a Tactile
Drawing Club in Colombia During COVID-19." CHI EA 2022.
Williamson, J.R., O'Hagan, J., Guerra-Gomez, J.A.,
Williamson, J.H., Cesar, P., Shamma, D.A. (2022). "Digital Proxemics:
Designing Social and Collaborative Interaction in Virtual Environments."
CHI 2022.
Pandey, A., Syeda, U.H., Shah, C., Guerra-Gomez, J.A.,
Borkin, M. (2021). "A State-of-the-Art Survey of Tasks for Tree Design and
Evaluation with a Curated Task Dataset." IEEE TVCG 2021.
Guerra-Gomez, J.A., Pack, M.L., Plaisant, C.,
Shneiderman, B. (2013). "Visualizing Change over Time Using Dynamic
Hierarchies: TreeVersity2 and the StemView." IEEE TVCG 2013.
Wongsuphasawat, K., Guerra-Gomez, J.A., Plaisant, C.,
Wang, T.D., Taieb-Maimon, M., Shneiderman, B. (2011). "LifeFlow:
Visualizing an Overview of Event Sequences." CHI 2011.
Full list of 30+ publications:
johnguerra.co/#papers
Education
PhD & MSc in Computer Science — University of
Maryland, College Park (2013)
Advisors: Dr. Ben Shneiderman & Dr. Catherine Plaisant. Focus: HCI,
Information Visualization.
BSc in Systems Engineering — Universidad Tecnológica de
Pereira, Colombia (2004)
Awards & Patents
US Patent application (IRIS accessibility system) · Colombian
Patent granted · Fulbright Science & Technology Fellow (40
awarded worldwide/year) · 10+ international entrepreneurship awards
for DUTO · Program Committee: IEEEVIS 2020–24, CHI, Creativity
& Cognition, Graph Drawing