Heer was an assistant professor of computer science at
Stanford University, from 2009 to 2013. Heer's research focuses on new systems and techniques for
data visualization. As a member of the Stanford University faculty, he worked with
Mike Bostock on the Protovis and
D3.js systems. Heer then moved to the
University of Washington where he worked with students and collaborators to develop the
Vega and Vega-Lite visualisation grammars. Along with
Joe Hellerstein and
Sean Kandel, Heer has also developed interactive tools for data transformation (including Data Wrangler), leading to the founding of Trifacta. Other research contributions include work on the graphical perception of visualizations, social data analysis, text visualization, and interactive language translation tools. == Awards and recognition ==