Bio

Leilani Battle is the Robert E. Dinning Endowed Professor in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, and co-director of the UW Interactive Data Lab. Her research interests focus on developing interactive data-intensive systems that can aid analysts in performing complex data exploration and analysis. Her current research is anchored in the field of databases, but utilizes research methodology and techniques from HCI and visualization to integrate data processing (databases) with interactive interfaces (HCI, visualization). Prof. Battle has received early career awards from both the database (2022 TCDE Rising Star Award) and visualization (2023 IEEE VGTC Significant New Researcher Award) research communities. She was named one of the 35 Innovators Under 35 by the MIT Technology Review in 2020 and was selected as a Sloan Fellow in 2023. Her research has been supported by several organizations, including Adobe, VMWare, Google, the ORAU, and the National Science Foundation (via the GRF, CISE CRII and CISE CAREER programs). In 2017, she completed a postdoc in the UW Interactive Data Lab. She holds an MS (2013) and PhD (2017) in Computer Science from MIT, where she was a member of the MIT Database Group, and a BS in Computer Engineering from UW (2011), where she was a member of the UW database group.