JooYoung Seo

Other professional appointments

Faculty Affiliate, Department of Computer Science
Faculty Affiliate, Illinois Informatics
Faculty Affiliate, National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)
Faculty Affiliate, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology
Data Science Educator Affiliate, RStudio
Affiliate Scientist, Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center (RERC) on Blindness and Low Vision at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute

Research focus

Accessible computing/data science, ability design human-computer interaction, inclusive Learning Sciences/STEM+C education across dis/abilities, and accessible health informatics.

Honors and Awards

Early Career Award, Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), 2023-2026
Teach Access Faculty Award, 2023
Teacher Ranked as Excellent, University of Illinois (Spring 2022)
Best Paper Honorable Mention, 2022 ACM CHI
2021-2022 Emerging Scholar, International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS)
Qualcomm Fellowship (2020), ACM Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference
Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (2020), College of Education, The Pennsylvania State University
Cengage Best Doctoral Proposal Fellowship (2019), International Conference on Quantitative Ethnography
Andrew V. Kozak Memorial Fellowship (2019), The PDK Educational Foundation
Delta Gamma Golden Anchor Award (2015, 2017), The Pennsylvania State University
Global Korean Government Scholarship (2014-2016), National Institute for International Education, Korean Government, Seoul, South Korea

Biography

JooYoung Seo is an assistant professor in the School of Information Sciences and a faculty affiliate in the Department of Computer Science, Informatics Institute, and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Seo is also an RStudio double-certified data science instructor and accessibility expert certified by the International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP). His research topics involve accessible computing, universal design, inclusive data science, and equitable healthcare technologies. As an emerging learning scientist and information scientist, his research focuses particularly on how to make computational literacy more accessible to people with dis/abilities by using multimodal data representation.

He has worked on various research and development projects on accessible computing and open-source data science packages (e.g., gt; shiny; rmarkdown to name a few) for accessibility. His research projects have involved not just web accessibility, but also human-centered design and development studies, including inclusive makerspaces, tangible block-based programming, accessible data science (e.g., data tactualization, sonification, and verbalization), and accessible/reproducible scientific writing tools for people with and without dis/abilities.

His research is funded by national institutes, industrial partners, and academic society, such as Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR), Posit Software, PBC (formerly RStudio), Teach Access, and the International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS) and the Wallace Foundation.

Seo obtained his PhD and M.Ed in learning, design, and technology at the Pennsylvania State University, and double BA in education and English literature from Sungkyunkwan University, Seoul, South Korea.

JooYoung Seo CV

Courses currently teaching

Office hours

By appointment, please contact professor

Publications & Papers

For a complete list of publications, visit JooYoung Seo's Google Scholar page.

Seo, J., Kamath, S. S., Zeidieh, A., Venkatesh, S., & McCurry, S. (2024, October 28). MAIDR Meets AI: Exploring Multimodal LLM-Based Data Visualization Interpretation by and with Blind and Low-Vision Users. Proceedings of the 26th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility.

Kamath, S. S., Zeidieh, A., Khan, O., Sethi, D., & Seo, J. (2024, October 28). Playing Without Barriers: Crafting Playful and Accessible VR Table-Tennis with and for Blind and Low-Vision Individuals. Proceedings of the 26th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility.

Ge, K., & Seo, J. (2024, October 28). StereoMath: An Accessible and Musical Equation Editor. Proceedings of the 26th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility.

Seo, J., O’Modhrain, S., Xia, Y., Kamath, S., Lee, B., & Coughlan, J. M. (2024). Designing Born-Accessible Courses in Data Science and Visualization: Challenges and Opportunities of a Remote Curriculum Taught by Blind Instructors to Blind Students. In R. S. and A. Firat Elif E. and Laramee (Ed.), EuroVis 2024 - education papers. The Eurographics Association. https://doi.org/10.2312/eved.20241053

Seo, J., Xia, Y., Lee, B., Mccurry, S., & Yam, Y. J. (2024). MAIDR: Making Statistical Visualizations Accessible with Multimodal Data Representation. Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642730

Choi, S., Seo, J., Hernandez, M., & Kitsiou, S. (2024). Conversational agents in mHealth: Use patterns, challenges, and design opportunities for individuals with visual impairments. Journal of Technology in Behavioral Science. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41347-024-00409-7

Lee, J. G. W., Lee, B., Choi, S., Seo, J., & Choe, E. K. (2024). Identify, Adapt, Persist: The Journey of Blind Individuals with Personal Health Technologies. Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies, 8(2), 51:1–51:21. https://doi.org/10.1145/3659585

Seo, J., & Rogge, M. (2023). Coding Non-Visually in Visual Studio Code: Collaboration Towards Accessible Development Environment for Blind Programmers. Proceedings of the 25th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1145/3597638.3614550

Seo, J., & Dogucu, M. (2023). Teaching Visual Accessibility in Introductory Data Science Classes with Multi-Modal Data Representations. Journal of Data Science, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.6339/23-JDS1095

Lee, C. Y. P., Zhang, Z., Herskovitz, J., Seo, J., & Guo, A. (2022). CollabAlly: Accessible Collaboration Awareness in Document Editing. CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3517635

Presentations

Seo, J. (2021, October). Non-Visual Strategies for Making Statistical-Computing Accessible. Lightening talk at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Champaign, IL.

Seo, J. (2021, September). Accessibility of Science Beyond Content Accessibility. Talk presented at the Argonne National Laboratory (Maths and Computer Science Division): https://www.anl.gov/event/accessibility-of-science-beyond-content-accessibility.

Seo, J. (2021, June). How to Learn to Code. Nature, Webcast: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-01638-z.

Seo, J., & Richard, G. T. (2021, February). Uncovering latent topics of blind people in computer science: structural topic modeling for an email corpus. The International Conference on Quantitative Ethnography (ICQE), Malibu, CA.

Seo, J. (2021, January). Accessible data science beyond visual models. RStudio::global(2021): https://global.rstudio.com/student/page/40617.

Seo, J. (2020, September). Discovering knowledge sharing patterns of blind people pursuing STEM disciplines: data science and computational linguistics on large-scale email corpora. The ACM Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing.

Seo, J., & Richard, G. T. (2020, April). Maker inclusivity = maker accessibility: further interrogations for diverse participation. The American Educational Research Association (AERA), Virtual.

Seo, J., & Richard, G. T. (2018, April). Furthering inclusivity in making: a framework for accessible design of makerspaces for learners with disabilities. The American Educational Research Association (AERA), New York City, NY.

Seo, J. (2017, September). Tactile access to visualized statistical data using R. The ACM Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing, Atlanta, GA.

Liao, J., Patcyk, M., Seo, J., & Hooper, S. (2016, October). Using hierarchical linear modeling to measure growth rate in a gamified CBM environment. The Northeastern Educational Research Association (NERA), Trumbull, CT.