Prof. QU Huamin Won 2025 IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications Test of Time Award

Prof. QU Huamin, Dean of the Academy of Interdisciplinary Studies and Chair Professor of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), won the 2025 IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications (CG&A) Test of Time Award for his 2010 paper, titled “Context-Preserving, Dynamic Word Cloud Visualization”. The paper was co-authored with his former PhD students Dr. CUI Weiwei and Dr. WU Yingcai, along with LIU Shixia, WEI Furu, and Michelle ZHOU, who were researchers at IBM China Research Lab at that time. This marks the first time a paper originating from Asia has won this award.

About the winning paper
Traditional word clouds capture only a single snapshot of text, but Prof. Qu’s team devised a way to track how content evolves over time. Their method generates a sequence of word clouds where semantically related terms stay grouped together across time steps, paired with a trend chart summarising overall content shifts. This approach let users visually trace how topics in large document collections rise, fall, or change, a technique that has since shaped text and visual analytics tools well beyond its original publication.

About the award
The IEEE CG&A Test of Time Award was established in 2021 to recognize feature and special issue articles published in CG&A that have made significant and lasting contributions to bridging the theory and practice of computer graphics. The 2025 award considered papers published between 2006 and 2015, and Prof. Qu’s paper was the only one selected for the honor.