Tara Zepel is a data designer, visualization researcher and teacher. She received her PhD in January 2018 from UC San Diego with a specialization in data visualization. Her dissertation, Contemporary Data Visualization: A Cultural History and Close Readings, lays the groundwork for seeing data visualization as a socially and culturally situated medium. While in graduate school, Tara worked as a researcher at the Software Studies Initiative. She is currently a postdoc in the HeinLab at UBC where she draws on her experience in image and data analysis to accelerate the pace of discovery in science through rich data presentations and computer vision.