Amy Rae Fox

Welcome! As a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Teaching in the Department of Cognitive Science at UC San Diego, I teach and conduct research on topics at the intersection of cognition and computing.

I study the cognitive science of graphical representation. Drawing on theory and methods across behavioural, social and information sciences, I explore how humans create, understand and make use of graphical representations as tools for thinking. These cognitive technologies range from stunning interactive visualizations of data, to simple charts graphs, diagrams and systems of notation.

I leverage what we know about human cognition to inform the design of these tools for thinking, and study their everyday use to advance our understanding of human cognition.

news

December 2025	Honoured to be invited to give a talk at this Dagstuhl Seminar on the intersection of Visualization & Psychology. My provocation: What might we learn by treating visualization more like language than like imagery?
November 2025	I had the privilege of presenting our research team’s (2) papers on the socio-indexical function of visualization (aka “Visualization Vibes”) at IEEE VIS in Vienna. Check out our presentations here!
September 2025	Precisely 10 years after starting my PhD journey at UCSD, I’m off to give my first lecture as a faculty member in my (beloved ;) Department of Cognitive Science. Allons-y!
July 2025	Curious about the relationship between a graph’s aesthetics and our assessments of trust? After two years of hard work our team’s (labour of love) papers on the socio-indexical function of visualization design have been accepted to IEEE VIS (with a best paper honourable mention)! Check out the pre-prints here and here.
July 2025	Heading out to the super-secretive place to BE to catch up on the latest about Visualization in Science and Education: The GRC-VSE and all new this year pre-conference seminar for early career researchers. What happens at a GRC stays at the GRC…except the inspiration ;)