VAHC 2025 Doctoral Consortium

Call for Participation: VAHC 2025 Doctoral Consortium

Co located with IEEE VIS 2025 / Vienna / November 2nd, 2025

The 2025 Workshop on Visual Analytics (VA) in Healthcare (VAHC 2025) is the 16th annual workshop that provides an opportunity for participants to discuss state-of-the-art interactive visual data analysis techniques and review how such techniques can be applied to healthcare data. Recent advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI), generative AI, and other emerging technologies have led to a growing and evolving need for healthcare VA solutions. These technologies can be leveraged to enhance AI explainability and improve human data analysis through AI-driven reasoning. The primary objective of the workshop is to bring together leading VIS designers, VA researchers, medical experts, and visionaries to discuss: a) interactive data visualization techniques that can be applied to healthcare data, b) areas of healthcare that need more attention from the visualization and visual data analysis community, and c) emerging research trends, visualization techniques, software applications, benchmarks, and open datasets.

The VAHC Doctoral Consortium offers PhD candidates conducting research in visual analytics applied to healthcare challenges to discuss their research, and to receive feedback from experienced scholars and peers. We aim to connect promising doctoral candidates with senior mentors and peers for thesis guidance, domain-specific feedback, and community-building opportunities. We welcome topics including (but not limited to):

  • Clinical data visualization (EMR exploration, decision support systems)
  • Explainable AI for diagnostics, treatment planning, healthcare education, etc.
  • Visual analytics for mobile/digital health
  • Multi-modal integration of medical and -omics data
  • Patient-centered analytics (healthcare accessibility, remote monitoring, coordination of care, etc.)
  • Public health visualization (e.g., pandemic care)

Preference will be given to applicants who are:

  • Dissertation topics focusing on visual analytics applied to healthcare challenges
  • PhD candidates with at least one year remaining before defense

Participants will receive:

  • Opportunity to discuss their dissertation topic with experienced peers within the VAHC community
  • Targeted feedback from senior mentors
  • Peer discussion and networking opportunities
  • Guidance on thesis refinement, research design, evaluation, and publication planning

Applications will be evaluated on their:

  • Relevance to visual analytics for healthcare
  • Dissertation stage and advisor’s assessment of readiness
  • Potential to benefit from mentorship

Event Format & Timeline

Please note: In-person attendance is required for participation. In person event with individual presentations and small group mentorship. Participants are expected to attend the full workshop VAHC day collocated with IEEE VIS 2025 in Vienna, Austria.

When: Sunday, November 2 2025
Where: Vienna, Austria (co-located with the VAHC workshop)

Submission deadline: August 20, 2025, 23:59 AoE
Notification of acceptance: September 5, 2025 (3 days before early bird registration ends)

Submission Guidelines

Submit a single PDF to vahc.sig@gmail.com by August 20, 2025, 23:59 AoE, as follows.

Three-page summary (excluding references), covering:

  • Abstract (max 150 words)
  • Problem statement, including the topic’s significance to healthcare
  • Research questions
  • Related work
  • Proposed methodology
  • Progress and preliminary results, including a summary of existing publications
  • Planned contributions and evaluation strategy
  • Expected impact of the thesis on the visualization and healthcare communities
  • Mentorship request (250-300 words): Specifying the feedback you seek (e.g., evaluation design, clinical validation strategy).

Supervisor endorsement letter: Confirming PhD candidacy or enrollment in a PhD program, project topic and timeline, and expected benefit to the candidate. This should not be a letter of recommendation, but rather a brief statement of support.

Formatting: Submissions should be single-author only. Please use the VGTC Conference Style LaTeX/Word template, which can be found here.

Organizers & Chairs

ORGANIZERS:

  • Alessio Arleo, TU Eindhoven — General Chair
  • Gabriela Morgenshtern, University of Zurich — Co Chair
  • Renata G. Raidou, TU Wien — Co Chair

CONSORTIUM CHAIRS:

  • Renata G. Raidou, TU Wien
  • Jürgen Bernard, University of Zurich
  • David Gotz, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • [To be announced] (keynote speaker)