Adapted from the European Association for Computer Graphics announcement
The European Association for Computer Graphics this week named University of Utah Scientific Computing and Imaging (SCI) Institute assistant professor Andrew McNutt the recipient of its 2026 Johanna Beyer EuroVis Early Career Researcher Award. The distinction recognizes McNutt for his outstanding contributions in critical visualization and programming interfaces, and for graphically augmenting domain-specific languages.
“I am deeply, deeply honored,” McNutt said following the June 9 announcement at EuroVis, the major annual visualization conference in Europe. “It is overwhelming to have my work recognized by a venue that I look up to so much.”
The award broadly recognizes early career researchers who have already made notable contributions to the field and are likely to make more. McNutt, who joined SCI in 2024, seeks to empower end-users to conduct data-rich tasks, such as visual analytics, in a way that facilitates and encourages best practices. He accommodates variance in skill, attention, and domain by designing interfaces—ranging from languages to graphical user interfaces—that improve how people use, manipulate, and present data.
“Andrew McNutt’s work significantly raised the level of rigor with which the visualization community approaches design-specific languages both as tool and object of study,” the EuroVis announcement reads.
McNutt has published about 40 articles, many of them in top journals and conferences, and he holds one patent. He has organized a number of IEEE VIS workshops including the boundary-pushing alt.vis and the sustainability-focused VISions of the Future. He has also received 11 recognitions for outstanding reviews. His role in the European research community is underlined by several publications in the Computer Graphics Forum, including a single-authored full paper that earned an honorable mention. Since 2025, he has served as a member of the EuroVis full paper and short paper program committees.
“This award reflects the many layered networks and connections that have supported me over the years: my mentors, collaborators, students, colleagues, antagonists, and friends,” McNutt said. “Thank you to the EuroVis Steering Committee and award committee for this recognition, and to everyone who has been part of this path.”
The assistant professor is also active in the conference for human-computer interaction, or CHI—his 2025 contributions included an honorable mention.
McNutt earned his doctoral degree in computer science from the University of Chicago in 2023 for his thesis, “Understanding and Enhancing JSON-based DSL Interfaces for Visualization.” He received a B.S. in physics from Reed College in 2014 and an M.S. in computer science from the University of Chicago in 2019. After this, he spent a year as postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington.
