Matthew Turk

Matthew Turk

Assistant Professor of Information Sciences

University of Illinois

National Center for Supercomputing Applications

Biography

Matthew Turk is an assistant professor in the School of Information Sciences and also holds an appointment with the Department of Astronomy in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. His research is focused on how individuals interact with data and how that data is processed and understood.

At the University of Illinois, he leads the Data Exploration Lab and teaches in Data Visualization, Data Storytelling, and Computational Astrophysics.

Interests

  • Data Analysis
  • Data Visualization
  • Open Source Scientific Software
  • Astrophysical Computation

Education

  • PhD in Physics, 2009

    Stanford University

  • BA in Physics and Math, 2003

    Northwestern University

Interests

Data Representation

Data Viz

Storytelling

Sustainability

Collaboration

Scientific Computing

Experience

 
 
 
 
 

Assistant Professor

School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois

Sep 2016 – Present Illinois
 
 
 
 
 

Research Scientist

NCSA, University of Illinois

Jun 2014 – Aug 2016 Illinois
At the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, I built a research group to conceptualize, develop and understand tools for data exploration and visualization. In collaboration with others at the NCSA, I worked to advance the National Data Service and other initiatives.
 
 
 
 
 

Associate Research Scientist

Columbia University Astronomy

Jan 2014 – May 2014 New York City
Supported by the NSF SI2-SSE grant ACI-1339624 (proposal available here) I was an associate research scientist at Columbia.
 
 
 
 
 

NSF CI TraCS Postdoctoral Fellow

Columbia University Astronomy

Jan 2011 – Dec 2013 New York City
As part of the NSF CI TraCS fellowship program, I spent three years at the Columbia University Astronomy Department developing computational tools for astrophysical simulations in collaboration with Prof Greg Bryan.
 
 
 
 
 

Postdoctoral Scholar

University of California San Diego

Jul 2009 – Dec 2010 San Diego, CA
I worked as a postdoc with Prof Mike Norman at the Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences at UCSD.
 
 
 
 
 

Graduate Student

KIPAC/SLAC, Stanford University

Aug 2004 – Jun 2009 Palo Alto, CA

Recent Posts

Contextual Sidecar in Obsidian

A plugin to keep helpful stuff available in a sidecar panel.
Last updated on Mar 3, 2024

How I Rang In 2024

A project I’ve been noodling with for the last few years (okay a lot of years) has been reverse engineering the file formats for the game The Summoning. This has led to things like learning kaitai.
Last updated on Jan 3, 2024

Paper Annotation in Obsidian

I’ve started keeping notes on papers in Obsidian and I thought I’d share the workflow, which so far is pretty straightforward and easy to set up. This uses the binary file manager plugin and the annotator plugin.
Last updated on Jun 9, 2023

Recent Fun With yt

I’ve recently been having fun with yt again. Really, though, I’ve been having fun exploring the ways I can use it from different perspectives, and using it to teach myself the library textual.
Last updated on Jun 6, 2023

Project Notes in Obsidian

A quick setup for project notes in Obsidian
Last updated on May 23, 2023
See all posts

Projects

yt

yt is an open-source python package for analyzing and visualizing volumetric data.

Crops in Silico

Crops in Silico is an integrative and multi-scale modeling platform to combine modeling efforts toward the generation of virtual crops, open and accessible to the global community.

Whole Tale

Whole Tale is an initiative to build a scalable, open source, web-based, multi-user platform for reproducible research.

Courses

Repositories and websites for courses I have taught.

Last updated on Apr 13, 2022

IS545 - Spring 2022

Advanced Data Viz from Spring 2022

Last updated on Apr 13, 2022

IS445 - Fall 2021

Data Viz from Fall 2021

Last updated on Apr 13, 2022

IS545 - Spring 2021

Advanced Data Viz from Spring 2021

Last updated on Apr 13, 2022

IS445 - Fall 2020

Data Viz from Fall 2020

See all

Recent & Upcoming Talks

yt: for volumetric analysis and visualization

Oct 26, 2021
Slides Video

Data Storytelling and the Grammar of Analysis

Analyzing complex, multi-source, multi-format and multi-modal data from astrophysical simulations, observations and theory requires …
Oct 14, 2021
Slides

Visualization with yt

Jun 7, 2021
Slides

Cosmological Simulation Infrastructure

In this talk, we will present work to make accessible large-scale (and small-scale) simulations through the usage of web technologies, …
May 26, 2021
Slides Video

state of viz in yt

Dec 9, 2020
Slides Video
See all talks

Recent Publications

Computing environments for reproducibility: Capturing the ``Whole Tale''

The act of sharing scientific knowledge is rapidly evolving away from traditional articles and presentations to the delivery of …
Adam Brinckman, Kyle Chard, Niall Gaffney, Mihael Hategan, Matthew B Jones, Kacper Kowalik, Sivakumar Kulasekaran, Bertram Ludäscher, Bryce D Mecum, Jarek Nabrzyski, Victoria Stodden, Ian J Taylor, Matthew J Turk, Kandace Turner
PDF

unyt: Handle, manipulate, and convert data with units in Python

Software that processes real-world data or that models a physical system must have some way of managing units. While simple approaches …
Nathan J Goldbaum, John A ZuHone, Matthew J Turk, Kacper Kowalik, Anna L Rosen
PDF

GAMER-2: a GPU-accelerated adaptive mesh refinement code -- accuracy, performance, and scalability

We present GAMER-2, a GPU-accelerated adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) code for astrophysics. It provides a rich set of features, …
Hsi-Yu Schive, John A ZuHone, Nathan J Goldbaum, Matthew J Turk, Massimo Gaspari, Chin-Yu Cheng
PDF

Crops In Silico: Generating Virtual Crops Using an Integrative and Multi-scale Modeling Platform

Multi-scale models can facilitate whole plant simulations by linking gene networks, protein synthesis, metabolic pathways, physiology, …
Amy Marshall-Colon, Stephen P Long, Douglas K Allen, Gabrielle Allen, Daniel A Beard, Bedrich Benes, Susanne von Caemmerer, A J Christensen, Donna J Cox, John C Hart, Peter M Hirst, Kavya Kannan, Daniel S Katz, Jonathan P Lynch, Andrew J Millar, Balaji Panneerselvam, Nathan D Price, Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz, David Raila, Rachel G Shekar, Stuti Shrivastava, Diwakar Shukla, Venkatraman Srinivasan, Mark Stitt, Matthew J Turk, Eberhard O Voit, Yu Wang, Xinyou Yin, Xin-Guang Zhu
PDF

grackle: a chemistry and cooling library for astrophysics

We present the grackle chemistry and cooling library for astrophysical simulations and models. grackle provides a treatment of …
Britton D Smith, Greg L Bryan, Simon C O Glover, Nathan J Goldbaum, Matthew J Turk, John Regan, John H Wise, Hsi-Yu Schive, Tom Abel, Andrew Emerick, Brian W O'Shea, Peter Anninos, Cameron B Hummels, Sadegh Khochfar
PDF
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