Sustainability is a pressing global issue, and innovation is key to finding solutions. Professor Kay Schröder and Professor Dai-In Danny Han, in partnership with a group of talented students, are working diligently to explore new avenues for making sustainable food behavior a part of our daily lives.
During this collaboration between Düsseldorf and Maastricht, the students are developing fresh and immersive approaches to captivate our attention and stir our consciousness and actions towards sustainable food practices. Their dedication and creativity are nothing short of inspiring.
This week, a select group of students has been hard at work in the Food Experience Lab at the Research Center Future of Food in Maastricht, weaving together the worlds of sustainability and immersive experiences. Their work is not just about theorizing but creating real-world, tangible solutions that could change the way we think about food and sustainability.
The project exemplifies how cross-disciplinary approaches—combining design thinking, food science, behavioral psychology, and immersive technologies—can create compelling experiences that not only inform but also motivate lasting behavioral change. By making sustainable choices more visible, accessible, and engaging, this initiative aims to bridge the gap between environmental awareness and everyday food decisions.

Our exhibition "Losing Earth" was recently showcased at the prestigious Kunsthalle Düsseldorf! This innovative presentation brought together three artists based in three different countries—Germany, Japan, and the Netherlands—who explored novel approaches to translating climate change data into tangible, experiential forms.
The exhibition served as a parallel event to New Design from Düsseldorf and attracted an impressive 3,000 visitors to the Kunsthalle. At the heart of "Losing Earth" was an exploration of climate data through spatial and typographical representation, offering fresh perspectives on how we might interact with future climate scenarios.
Visitors experienced the remarkable works of data artists Kay Schröder, Mariko Takagi, and Jules Sinsel, each bringing their unique cultural and artistic perspective to the climate crisis. The international collaboration highlighted the global nature of climate challenges while demonstrating the universal language of visual communication.
It was truly inspiring to witness art's power to spark meaningful conversations and motivate change. We extend our sincere gratitude to everyone who contributed to making this exhibition a success. Climate change remains one of the most critical challenges of our era, and through artistic expression and creative data visualization, we hope to heighten awareness and cultivate a deeper understanding of the urgent need for collective action.

Global terrorism has been a prominent news topic for several decades. It's a complex issue stemming from various extremist ideologies. What headlines often fail to mention is that attacks, fatalities, and non-lethal terrorism victims have actually been decreasing since 2014. What caused this decline? How significant is the threat today, and what risks remain?

Our analysis examines the three major waves of terrorist activity recorded since the Global Terrorism Database began collecting data in 1970. We identify the groups responsible for the most attacks and document the deadliest incidents to date.

Through our interactive globe tool, users can explore terrorist attacks geographically, filter by attack types, discover the weapons used, view different time periods, and even examine specific terror groups, enabling everyone to explore the complex world of terrorism data for themselves and develop a more nuanced understanding of this global phenomenon.

The Human Data Interaction Lab has launched an exciting research collaboration with the Dutch Police and the Open University. In partnership with ILab—an innovation department of the Dutch police—we are initiating two challenging projects to explore novel approaches to human data interaction.

We have already begun the first experiment, which involves mixed teams of domain experts, researchers, and students from Zuyd ICT. This initial project focuses on the development and scientific evaluation of instructed reality technology. This emerging field combines elements of augmented reality with guided interaction systems to enhance decision-making in complex scenarios.

The collaboration represents a significant opportunity to bridge academic research with practical law enforcement applications, potentially transforming how police officers interact with data in the field. By bringing together diverse expertise from multiple institutions, we aim to create innovative solutions that address real-world challenges in public safety and security through advanced data interaction methods.

Featured at Human Computer Interaction International 2022
Featured at Pleasure, Arts and Sciences Festival Maastricht
Exhibition "Touching Abstraction" Brightlands Smart Services Campus 2020

The increasing amount of interconnected data has given rise to a need among researchers and practitioners to develop new approaches to the visualization of network structures. The intricacy of such structures vastly exceeds the capacity of most conventional approaches to network visualization in terms of dimensional and resolution restrictions as they are mostly presented two-dimensional with limited screensize. An additional limition of traditional network visualization tools from a human-computer interaction standpoint is the limited interaction itself where immersion and ‘deep-diving’ into high-dimensional data is not possible. We built NetImmerse, an application to visualize network data in a virtual environment with the ability to overview, zoom, and request details on-demand. Within the virtual space, users have the possibility to either walk around the 3D data representation or rotate and move the representation using the two controllers. We tested the application with users and simulated a representative use case. NetImmerse enabled the participants to gain accurate insights based on the defined task. Participants indicated a PU of 5.25 and a PEOU of 5.46. We believe that NetImmerse is an engaging platform for multi-dimensional data exploration and may result in better insights and enhance the ability of network data exploration.