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Hi, I'm Frank Elavsky

I research, design, engineer, contribute to standards, and talk about things at the intersection of data work and accessibility. I consider myself a maker and a builder before anything else, but I like to think I also do this work critically.

I'm a PhD student and researcher at the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. I am advised by Dominik Moritz and Patrick Carrington and a member of the Data Interaction Group and AXLE Lab. I am also a W3C invited expert in data visualization in the ARIA Working Group and volunteer my time with other efforts.

I also offer part-time consulting services on a case by case basis, from single-session calls to large, on-going projects. My more recent work (both big and small) includes collaboration with the wonderful folks at Highsoft's Highcharts 📊, Apple , Adobe, Fizz Studio, SRI, UW-Madison's WGNHS, Northwestern University's MLDS, Quansight Labs, FiveThirtyEight, tldraw, and Microsoft. As of Jan 2024: I am likely booked for larger projects until the end of the summer of 2026. Please don't hestitate to reach out, I would still be happy to discuss what you're up to, connect you to folks, and send over resources.

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My background

Before embarking on a PhD I was a staff design systems engineer at Visa on their Data Experience team and lead contributor to the accessibility efforts of their first open source library, Visa Chart Components. We were able to do some pretty extraordinary things together and I am fortunate to have worked alongside such world-class folks.

Prior to Visa I had a high-octane 2 years at Northwestern University working for Research Computing Services providing data visualization support to over two dozen research projects across a wide range of disciplines. Several of my projects won awards and have been featured in over 60 research publications (including the privilege of being uncredited in the 2017 Nobel Lecture on Physics), 100+ web articles, 4 PhD theses, 4 graduate courses, and 9 textbooks.

In my early career (before Northwestern), I worked in federal policy analyzing large, complex medicare/medicaid datasets and building visualization tools for lawyers and policymakers.

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