Cindy Xiong Bearfield

Bridging the fields of psychology and data visualization, Cindy Ya Xiong uses empirical studies and computational models to understand the cognitive and perceptual processes that underlie visual data interpretation. Through understanding how humans interpret and make decisions from visualized data, her research informs the design and development of visualizations and visualization tools that help people more effectively communicate data. 

Ya Xiong is an assistant professor in the Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) at UMass Amherst. She received her PhD in psychology and her MS in statistics from Northwestern University in 2021, and was a visiting scholar at Utrecht University in the Netherlands in 2018.

Ya Xiong's research at the intersection of human perception, cognition, and data visualization has received awards at premier venues in psychology and data visualization, including Psychonomics and IEEE VIS. She is one of the founding leaders of VISxVISION, a partnership dedicated to increasing collaboration between visualization researchers and perceptual + cognitive psychologists. She organized workshops, symposiums, and panels across both psychology and visualization venues to promote interdisciplinary research in these fields.