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The MPS Advisory Panels are composed of diverse industry professionals who bring to the program their expertise in the field to ensure that the program leads to the kinds of competencies and outcomes that will best serve MICA students upon graduation. Advisory panelists provide guidance on curriculum updates, advise on networking opportunities for students, work with program administration to identify best practices in the field, and provide general strategic advice to the program administration. The advisory boards are facilitated by the subject matter expert for that program.

Advisory Panelists

Alberto Cairo

Alberto Cairo is a journalist and designer with experience leading graphics and visualization teams. He teaches courses on infographics and data visualization at the University of Miami School of Communication where he is the director of the Center for Visualization, Data Communication & Information Design at UM’s Institute for Data Science and Computing, and a Faculty Fellow at the Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy. He is author of 4 data visualization books How Charts Lie: Getting Smarter About Visual Information, The Truthful Art: Data, Charts, and Maps for Communication, The Functional Art: an Introduction to Information Graphics and Visualization, and The Art of Insight: How Great Visualization Designers Think Cairo has also written for The New York Times and Scientific American magazine. In the past decade, Cairo has taught and consulted in nearly thirty countries. He has worked for companies including Microsoft, Google, the U.S. National Guard, and the Congressional Budget Office.

Matt Brehmer

Matt Brehmer is a Canadian-born Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) researcher specializing in information visualization. As a lead research staff member of Tableau Research in Seattle, he designs, implements, and evaluates new interactive experiences for communicating and collaborating around data. Prior to joining Tableau, Matt was a member of Extended Perception, Interaction & Cognition (EPIC) Research Group at Microsoft Research. Matt holds a PhD in computer science and a master's degree in HCI from the University of British Columbia, as well as an undergraduate degree in cognitive science from Queen's University. He has spoken about his research at events such as Outlier, Information+, and OpenVisConf, and he has co-authored research papers that have received test-of-time, best paper, and honorable mention awards from the IEEE conference on Visualization and Visual Analytics (VIS) and the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST). In 2022, he was elected by his research community peers to the executive committees of IEEE VIS and the IEEE Visualization and Computer Graphics Technical Community. Learn more about his work at mattbrehmer.ca.

Gabrielle Mérite

Gabrielle Mérite is an information designer and data illustrator, presenting data and information for ethically driven organizations. Deeply passionate about social justice and our responsibility as humans to be there for one another, Gabrielle communicates analytic findings with honesty, rawness and compassion. Informed by communication and social research, Gabrielle’s human-centered approach to data visualization connects deeply with big-picture issues. From the United Nations to BUCK and Pentagram, she works with teams deeply passionate about doing social good and pushing creative boundaries.