I’m a tenure-track Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, where I direct the VisAI Lab (Visualization and Artificial Intelligence Lab). Previously, I was an NIH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Fellow at the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School and a member of the HIDIVE Lab led by Nils Gehlenborg. I received my PhD in Computer Science and Engineering from Seoul National University under the supervision of Jinwook Seo at the Human-Computer Interaction Lab.
As an interdisciplinary researcher, I work at the intersection of visualization and AI with special emphasis on domain applications, such as healthcare and biomedical science. Previously, I led the design and development of the Gosling visualization grammar, which enables the construction of scalable and interactive genomics data visualizations and the leveraging of AI methods (see Nature’s Technology Feature).
My work has been published in top-tier conferences and journals across my fields, including VIS, TVCG, CHI, UIST, Nature Methods, Nature Medicine, npj Digital Medicine, and Bioinformatics. I have received competitive academic awards, including the NIH/NHGRI K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award, VIS Best Paper Honorable Mention Award, ISMB BioVis Best Abstract Award, ISMB BioVis Runner-Up Abstract Award, and VIS Best Poster Research Award. I have served on the program committee for top visualization conferences, including VIS, EuroVis, and PacificVis.
I'm currently looking to recruit PhD students (Fall ’26, Fall ’27) at HKUST CSE. For details, please read the Work With Me page.
News [see all]
Two Abstracts @ ISMB 2026
Two abstracts on agentic authoring and keyboard accessibility were accepted at ISMB 2026.
New Journey @ HKUST CSE
Sehi officially started as an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at HKUST.
Program Committee @ VIS 2026
Sehi is serving on the program committee for full papers at IEEE VIS 2026.
Visualization Design Knowledge Bases @ CHI 2026
A paper on formalized visualization design knowledge bases was accepted at CHI 2026.
Selected Projects
Visualization Toolkits for Biomedicine
Human–AI Interaction for Visualization
Visual Analytics for Cancer Data
COVID-19 Electronic Health Records
Digital Accessibility for Science
Selected Publications [see more]
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In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’26) (2026)
25.3% acceptance rate
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Scientific Reports (2025) 15, 23676
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IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG) (Proc. VIS) (2025)
23.2% acceptance rate
Best Paper Honorable Mention
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Bioinformatics (2024)
Runner-Up Abstract Award at ISMB BioVis 2025
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Nature Methods (2023) 20, 1834–1835
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IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG) (Proc. VIS) (2023) 29(1), 570-580
26.5% acceptance rate
IEEE InfoVis Best Poster Research Award
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IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG) (Proc. VIS) (2022) 28(1), 40-150
25.8% acceptance rate
ISMB/ECCB BioVis Best Abstract Award
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Media Coverage
Nature (TECHNOLOGY FEATURE)
Powerful 'grammar' allows geneticists to display their data in interactive and scalable illustrations.
"Postdoc Sehi L'Yi, who led Gosling's development, says that what differentiates Gosling from other visualization tools is its expressiveness. With most tools, he says, the graphics that can be made and what they will look like are predefined. 'It is really not easy to customize visualizations as a user.' But with Gosling, users can, for instance, specify the colour, dimensions and placement of the symbol used to represent a centromere or genomic interval, then overlay that on an ideogram of a chromosome to highlight a region of interest."
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Previous Mentees
- Skylar Walters (2025-2025) → PhD Student at UC Berkeley
- Astrid van den Brandt (2023-2024) → Postdoc at Harvard University
- Aditeya Pandey (2020-2021) → Senior Application Developer at Regeneron Genetics Center
- Thomas Smits (2023-2025) → PhD Student at Radboud University Medical Center
- Lawrence Weru (2024-2025) → Secretariat IT Accessibility Officer at Commonwealth of Massachusetts
- Sofía Rojas (2024-2024)
- Theresa Harbig (2023-2023)
- Etowah Adams (2023-2024) → PhD Student at Columbia University
- Andrew Mar (2024-2025)
- Erica Stutz (2022-2022) → PhD Student at Yale University
- Cynthia Rosas (2021-2021)
- Thanh Dung Ho (2019-2020) → software engineer at Accenture