Best Paper Award Dr Anwaar Ulhaq

In July 2023, at the 2023 International Conference on Information Visualisation (IV 2023) in Tampere, Finland, Dr Anwaar Ulhaq was awarded the best paper award for his paper SIDVis: Designing Visual Interactive System for Analyzing Suicide Ideation Detection. The conference is considered the premier conference in the realm of data visualisation.

ABSTRACT:

Suicide is a critical global issue that demands a comprehensive examination of factors such as mental illness, substance abuse, financial stress, and trauma. Effectively identifying individuals at risk is vital for intervention and prevention efforts. However, distinguishing suicidal ideation (SID) from non-suicidal language poses challenges. Existing research has addressed this issue, but limited attention has been given to visually interpretable and interactive systems tailored for SID. This study contributes to responsible AI by leveraging deep learning and machine learning techniques to enhance SID detection, enabling proactive interventions and support. In this paper, we introduce SIDVis, an interactive visualisation system that improves performance and interpretability at the same time. The rigorous evaluation demonstrates that SIDVis not only outperforms existing methods in terms of accuracy but also provides an explanation for the responsible use of the underlying AI approach, demonstrating its potential to improve SID detection and intervention strategies.