As artificial intelligence reshapes how information is produced and consumed, computer scientist Dr. Alvitta Ottley asks a more fundamental question — how do people actually think with data?
A leading voice in data visualization and human-centered computing, Ottley focuses on how people interpret information, navigate uncertainty and make decisions at a moment when the AI industry is still defining the best uses of its tools.
Her research centers on designing visual systems that strengthen human judgment rather than replace it, using machine learning, or AI, not as an answer engine but as a tool to help people ask better questions of their data and reduce workload.
“I’ve done work related to medical risk communication — how you help communicate to someone given a positive test that doesn’t necessarily mean that they have cancer,” said Ottley, an associate professor of computer science and engineering at Washington University.
“I also collaborated with people in the U.S. Department of Defense as they considered how to visualize large data sets and how they might integrate AI and machine learning into that process to help people sift through large amounts of data.”
Before joining Washington University’s faculty in 2016, Ottley earned her doctorate in computer science and engineering at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, where she also received her master’s degree. After completing her master’s, she worked as a research intern at IBM Research and Clemson University’s Human-Centered Computing Lab in South Carolina.
Ottley is among a small number of Black women in the computer science field, which account for about 3% of degree earners and the tech workforce and less than 1% of those holding Ph.D.s, according to the National Center for Women and Information Technology.
Growing up in the Caribbean island nation of St. Kitts and Nevis, Ottley said a career in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, was not something she initially envisioned.
“I was the kind of student who was good at a lot of things, so there wasn’t one area that emerged for me,” Ottley said. “By the time I finished high school, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do.”
It was not until she began her studies at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh that she narrowed her interests to mathematics, accounting and computer science.
“I wanted to do everything,” Ottley said as she explored each discipline.
Computer science ultimately won out, and she decided to minor in mathematics.
Ottley said diverse perspectives are essential to innovation in STEM, a view shared by her peers.
Jordan Crouser, professor of computing and founding director of the Interdisciplinary Program in Computing at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, studies how people interact with data and emerging technologies and has collaborated with Ottley on more than a dozen scholarly papers.
“Alvitta has been this really central intellectual driver, thinking about how we combine these really squishy questions about human nature along with methodological rigor to push that work toward deeper impact,” Crouser said. “(Her) work not only has shaped my own scholarly trajectory, but really shaped how our field is thinking more broadly.”
Crouser said Ottley, who also serves on faculty in Washington University’s psychological and brain sciences department, examines how human diversity shapes the way people approach problems.
“When I think about Alvitta’s more recent work, she’s providing deep, rich, nuanced conceptual framing that is a shift from how we’ve done business in the past 30 years of human-centered design,” he said. “She’s modeling a way of doing computer science that doesn’t treat human values, interpretation and agency as afterthoughts but brings them forward as first-class concerns.”
Ottley has expanded her research through international collaborations and conferences.
In December, she organized a workshop in Germany that brought together psychologists and computer scientists to explore ideas at the intersection of the two fields. Her work has also taken her to Ghana.
Ottley and faculty at the University of Education, Winneba in Ghana, received a prestigious NASA grant through the Gordon Research Conferences to study data visualization literacy among early-career educators teaching K-12.
The research surveys teachers in Ghana and the United States to better understand cultural perspectives on data education and develop strategies to improve data literacy worldwide.
“Beyond that, we want to work on building our curriculum and giving teachers training so that they have the knowledge to go into the classroom and teach,” Ottley said.
Despite numerous grants and awards, Ottley said her greatest accomplishment is the impact she has on students.
“I am proud of the fact that I’m able to contribute to other people’s success,” she said.
Lemara Williams, a second-year doctoral student in computer science at Washington University, works under Ottley and is studying the structure of data visualization style guides and what makes them effective.
“She’s very dedicated to her craft,” Williams said. “When I talk to her about work, she inspires me to want to be a better researcher and to reach her level of work ethic and dedication.”