Saugat
सौगात 🥭About Me
I am in my final year as a Ph.D. student in the Department of Computer Science at Washington University in St. Louis. As a graduate research assistant at the Visual Interface and Behavior Exploration Lab (VIBE), I am interested in investigating visualization literacy, understanding perceived trust in data visualizations, and leveraging AI/ML techniques to help users understand data and data visualizations.
Job Seeking 🥭
I am actively seeking diverse opportunities in both industry research and academic positions where I can leverage state-of-the-art models—including computer vision, language models, and AI techniques—to help users better understand and interact with data. I am also interested in investigating how these techniques can support users who are generally left behind in science, such as blind and low vision communities.
Research Interests
- Multi-agentic frameworks to help users create effective visualizations
- Understanding visualization literacy from the multicultural lens
- Evaluating language models for visualization understanding
- Trust in Data Visualization across different contexts
- AI-powered Visualization Understanding and Enhancement
- Cross-cultural Visualization Design and Interpretation
Recent Updates
Paper titled "Visualization Literacy or Skillset? Beyond the Analogy to Textual Literacy" accepted at IEEE VIS Workshop 2025 (VisComm)
Attending EuroVIS in Luxembourg City, Luxembourg from May 31 - June 6 to present my work on benchmarking language models
Moved to Seattle for Summer 2025 to start working at Adobe as Research Scientist Intern
I passed my dissertation proposal!!!
Paper titled "Benchmarking Visual Language Models on Standardized Visualization Literacy Tests" accepted at EuroVIS 2025
I will be joining Adobe as Research Scientist Intern for Summer 2025
Paper titled "Trustworthy by Design: The Viewer's Perspective on Trust in Data Visualization" accepted at ACM CHI 2025
I finished co-instructing "Introduction to Visualization" with an average rating of 6.67/7
Paper on trust factors accepted at IEEE Visualization 2024
Research Areas
Recent Works
Visualization Literacy or Skillset? Beyond the Analogy to Textual Literacy
To appear @ IEEE VIS Workshop 2025 (VisComm)
Benchmarking Visual Language Models on Standardized Visualization Literacy Tests
Computer Graphics Forum, EuroVis 2025
Building and Eroding: Exogenous and Endogenous Factors that Influence Subjective Trust in Visualization
IEEE VIS 2024
Mini-VLAT: A Short and Effective Measure of Visualization Literacy 🏆
Computer Graphics Forum, EuroVis 2023 • Best Paper Award
Do You Trust What You See? Towards A Multidimensional Measure of Trust in Visualization
IEEE VIS 2023
Contact
You can always reach out to me via email p.saugat@wustl.edu if you want to discuss Visualization, LLMs, Vision, or ML/AI in general in the context of visualizations. I'm always excited to engage in conversations about these topics!