PhD (Otago), BCom (Hons), FNZCS
B.L. William Wong PhD BCom (Hons) FBCS FNZCS is Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and Head Interaction Design Centre. He is also Principal Scientist at Genetec, Inc. where he is currently on sabbatical to commercialise IP from his team's research.
His research is in cognitive engineering and the representation and interaction design of user interfaces that enhance situation awareness, sense-making, reasoning, decision making and transparency in human-machine teams. His investigations have included complex dynamic environments such as emergency ambulance command and control, air traffic control, and hydro-electricity dispatch.
He was Project Coordinator for the 18-organisation multi-disciplinary EU-funded FP7 VALCRI project. The project consortium worked with police forces to develop a suite of advanced sense-making, data processing and analytics tools. Key IP from this project was acquired by Genetec, Inc., a global security systems company based in Montreal, Canada, shortly after the completion of the project.
He has received over US$25.3 million in grants and has published over 120 scientific peer reviewed articles with his students and colleagues. Throughout his career, he has been engaged in setting up new ventures to carry out new work:
1990 – 1992, Singapore. Wong set up the Systems and Communications Operations Branch at HQ RSAF for the command and control of electronic assets during wartime;
1995 – 2003, New Zealand. He set up the Multimedia Systems Research Laboratory as a centre for research into human factors and multimedia.
2003 – 2018, United Kingdom. Wong led the Interaction Design Centre to use cognitive engineering and human-computer interaction principles and concepts as basis for designing new technologies, e.g. sense making tools for intelligence analysis, transparency in human-machine teaming, ATC, simulation and training.
2019 – onwards, United Kingdom. Commercialisation of VALCRI at Genetec, Inc. where Wong is leading the team to transition the research from lab prototypes into commercially viable products.
Published Research - last 5 years:
On 13 April 2005, William Wong presented his Inaugural Professorial Lecture entitled "Human-Systems Interaction: Challenges for Representation Design".
Xu, Kai and Salisu, Saminu and Nguyen, Phong H. and Walker, Rick and Wong, B. L. William and Wagstaff, Adrian and Phillips, Graham and Biggs, Mike (2020) TimeSets: temporal sensemaking in intelligence analysis. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications , 40 (3). pp. 83-93. ISSN 0272-1716
Hepenstal, Sam and Zhang, Leishi and Kodagoda, Neesha and Wong, B. L. William (2020) Pan: conversational agent for criminal investigations. In: IUI '20: 25th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces, 17-20 Mar 2020, Cagliari, Italy.
Hepenstal, Sam and Wong, B. L. William and Zhang, Leishi and Kodagoda, Neesha (2019) How analysts think: a preliminary study of human needs and demands for AI-based conversational agents. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting , 63 (1). pp. 178-182. ISSN 2169-5067
Qazi, Nadeem and Wong, B. L. William (2019) An interactive human centered data science approach towards crime pattern analysis. Information Processing & Management , 56 (6). ISSN 0306-4573
Hepenstal, Sam and Kodagoda, Neesha and Zhang, Leishi and Paudyal, Pragya and Wong, B. L. William (2019) Algorithmic transparency of conversational agents. In: IUI 2019 Workshop on Intelligent User Interfaces for Algorithmic Transparency in Emerging Technologies, 17-20 Mar 2019, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
| MITRE Corp. “Incident Monitoring and Re-construction”, MU Project Budget Reference Number 102254 | US$ 30,000 | 2017 |
| FP7 VALCRI Visual Analytics for sense-making in Criminal Intelligence analysis, 18 partner Integrating Project, FP7-608142. Project Coordinator: B.L. William Wong | €16.8 mil – full cost (€13.1 mil) | 2014 – 2018
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| CGI Small Research Project. Big Data and Visualisation – How many dimensions and outliers can you comprehend? PI: Kai Xu and B.L. William Wong, CI: Leishi Zhang | £20,000 | 2014-2015 |
| UKVAC VASS 2014 – ONR Global Collaborative Support Progran Award No. N62909-13-1-C227. Visual Analytics Summer School VASS 2013. | US$ 18,229.95 | 2013 |
| UKVAC Phase 2 Joint Research Programme (US Dept of Homeland Security, UK HM Government Home Office, 18 months); Consortium Coordinator: B.L. William Wong (Agreement No. 4112-46065, Sub-Agreement under the US DHS Cooperative Agreement No. 2009-ST-061-CI0001; Agreement with Home Office, dated 21 March 2012) | US$500,000 + £400,000 | 2012 - 2013 |
| DIVA Data Intensive Visual Analytics (PI: City University; Co-I; EP/J020443/1) | £172,333 | 2012 - 2013 |
| TSAM Team Sensemaking Assessment Method, partners with BAE Systems, ARA Klein Associates; MoD CDE (6 months). PI: Rob Hutton, BAES, WP Lead, Simon Attfield, MoD Contract No. DSTLX1000054435) | £50,000 | 2011 |
| UKVAC (UK Visual Analytics Consortium) Phase 1, US Department of Homeland Security, through the NVAC. Consortium Coordinator: B.L. William Wong (PNNL Contract No. 116077) | US$250,000 | 2010-2011 |
| EPSRC Making Sense, 10 UK partners. Deputy Principal Investigator: B.L. William Wong (EP/H023135/1) | £245,000 (Total: £2.2mil) | 2010 - 2013 |
| FP7 CRISIS Critical Incident management training System using and Interactive Simulation environment, 13 Pan-European partners. Project Coordinator: B.L. William Wong (FP7-242474) | €3.5 mil | 2010 – 2013 |
| JISC Rapid Innovation: INVISQUE Interactive Visual Search and Query Environment (JISC RI Ref. No. IEDEVC19) | £40,000 | 2009 (6 months) |
| JISC Project UBiRD “User Behaviour in Resource Discovery” (competitive tender, 1 project funded out of 19 applicants) JISC Ref. CSSERSA2 | £88, 531 | 2009 (6 months) |
| Secretary, European Association for Cognitive Ergonomics EACE | 2006 – 2009 |
| Executive Committee, British Computer Society Human-Computer Interaction Group (BHCIG) | 2004 – 2009 |
| Chairman, Education and Practice Sub-Committee, BCS HCI Group | 2004 – 2009 |
| Chairman (Otago/Southland Branch), National Councillor, Branch Executive Committee member, New Zealand Computer Society | 1994 – 2003 |
| Secretary, SIGCHI_NZ (Special Interest Group Computer-Human Interaction, NZ) | 2001 – 2003
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| Editorial Board, Member, Journal of Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making | 2017 - present |
| EPSRC College, Member | 2012 – present |
| Founding Chair for International Conferences: the CREATE series of conferences between BCS and Ergonomics Society; founding chair for now international HCIEd series of conferences, with IFIP TC13.1. General Chair and Technical Program Chair: CHINZ2003, ECCE 2008, NDM9, VAW2009. Program Committee member, Scientific Advisory Board member and reviewer for various international conferences such as the British HCI Conference series, the Australian OzCHI conference series, the IFIP INTERACT conference series, CHINZ conference series, APCHI conference series, EUROCONTROL INO Innovation Research Workshop (Conference), IHCI, APCHI conference, ECCE conference, ACM DIS, NordiCHI conference, HFES Annual Conference, IEEE SMC Conference, NDM, and IEEE EISIC Conferences. Journal Reviewer: including Int. J. of Human Computer Studies, Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science, Ergonomics, Int. J. of Human-Computer Interaction; Interacting with Computers; J. Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making; J. Human-Machine Studies. Reviewer for Research Councils: Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (UK), Economics and Social Research Council (UK), Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK), Agency for Science, Technology and Research (Singapore), Qatar National Research Fund (Qatar), National Research Foundation (South Africa), CHIST-ERA, French National Research Agency (ANR). | 1996 – present |
| International Visiting Research Scholar, Peter Wall Institute, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada (Dr Vicki Lemieux, School of Library, Archival and Information Studies, University of British Columbia). | 2014 |
| International Visiting Research Scholar, Peter Wall Institute, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada (Dr Vicki Lemieux, School of Library, Archival and Information Studies, University of British Columbia). | 2013 |
| "Outstanding" Certificate of Service, Republic of Singapore Air Force. Highest service award for outstanding contribution to systems development and management in the Air Force. | 1992 |
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