One area of our research focuses on finding new ways to transform scientific visualization through advances in artificial intelligence and cognitive science, especially drawing from the study of individuals with strong visuospatial cognitive skills, including many individuals with cognitive differences such as autism. The goal is to incorporate new computational models of how users visualize and explore data into the next generation of “smart” visualization tools. In the process, this research seeks to answer fundamental questions about human visual cognition and scientific discovery in the big data era.