Eric Lau wearing a white T-shirt with a blue long-sleeve shirt on top. He is wearing gold rim glasses and is looking to the right.

Eric Lau

I am the summer 2024 Washington Post graphics intern.

I previously led the engineering and data journalism teams at The Michigan Daily. I also worked as a data journalist and software engineer at The San Francisco Standard and The Texas Tribune.

I studied computer science and digital studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Engineering

I enjoy building websites with unique interactive components and strong visual design. Often times, I work with photographic or geographic elements. I care a lot about making sure my work is accessible to people with disabilities.

  • "The Michigan Daily" written in white on a blue background
    The Michigan Daily

    Engineered a cross-platform mobile application for The Michigan Daily. Built with React Native and Expo.

  • A crossword puzzle.
    The Michigan Daily Crosswords

    Created infrastructure to publish and play crosswords. Built with SvelteKit and SQLite.

  • Amman, Jordan on a summer day in 2023.
    The Fable of the Lion, the Butcher, and Three Kings

    Designed and developed poem layout. Built with Svelte, Scrollama and Mapbox.

  • A pixelated illustration of a lighthouse near a cliff. The light is beaming out to sea.
    Writing in the Digital Dark Age

    Designed and developed story layout. Collaborated and prototyped visual elements with the writer.

  • Two cassette tapes with floating neon blue hearts.
    Love Notes 2022 Edition

    Designed and developed a website displaying student love notes as cassette tapes. Built using Svelte.

  • A woman wearing a strawberry sweater in a corn field.
    MiC Style

    Developed a Michigan in Color website to showcase fashion and clothing from people of color. Built with Next.

  • An assortment of barber shop supplies including hair trimmers, combs and hair spray.
    Black Hair Series

    Developed a Michigan in Color website featuring photography, video and interviews on Black hair. Built with Svelte.

  • Students standing in front of trees with autumn leaves.
    2022 Photographers' Favorites

    Designed and developed a multimedia article showcasing Daily photographers' favorite photos from 2022. Built with Scrollama.

  • Dashed outlined map of Detroit.
    Detroit neighborhoods mapping tool

    Designed and developed an application to crowdsource Detroit neighborhood boundaries. Built with SvelteKit, OpenLayers and PostGIS.

Journalism

I work with journalists to tell important stories with graphics and visualizations. I am particularly experienced with building data trackers and bespoke interactives. I have interest in exploring illustrative and 3D forms.

  • Medical equipment inside a room at the Alamo Women's Reproductive Services Clinic in San Antonio, Texas.
    Abortion should be permitted in cases of rape and incest, around 80% of Texas voters say in UT poll

    Wrote a story on abortion public opinion. Interviewed several pollsters. Gathered historical polling data and built visualizations with Datawrapper.

  • Greg Abbott and Beto O'Rourke
    Here's how much Greg Abbott and Beto O'Rourke have raised in the race for Texas governor

    Created several data visualizations with Datawrapper to showcase gubernatorial fundraising.

  • A row of houses in Ann Arbor on a cloudy day.
    Massive power outage in Ann Arbor leaves thousands in the dark

    Built a tracker based on internal DTE APIs to retrieve power outage data. Created live-updating visualizations with D3 and Datawrapper.

  • The entrance to Giddings State School, a Texas Juvenile Justice Department prison in Lee County.
    Almost 600 Texas youths are trapped in a juvenile prison system on the brink of collapse

    Collaborated with Jolie McCullough to analyze and visualize data on the Texas juvenile prison system. Used Datawrapper and Observable.

  • UMich Class of 2025: By the numbers and their hopes for college

    Created data visuals conveying results from The Michigan Daily Class of 2025 survey. Built with D3 and Scrollama.

  • A series of Texas maps showing droughts severity from 2011 to 2022
    West Texas farmers and ranchers fear the worst as drought, heat near 2011 records

    Created small multiple maps of Texas showing drought severity over time. Built with Illustrator.

  • Small multiple graphic showing the disparity in revenue between the three University of Michigan campuses
    Daily analysis finds historically large salary disparities between three U-M campuses

    Created data visuals and analyzed University salary and budget records. Used Python and D3. Collaborated with editors and reporters to write stories.

  • Map showing whether Ann Arbor restaurants are closed or open
    More than 100 Ann Arbor restaurants closed in the past three years

    Created a map showing the status of Ann Arbor restaurants. Proxied restaurant status via inspection data. Built with QGIS and Adobe Illustrator.

  • Graphic showing the 301 in- and out-of- state feeder schools to the University of Michigan
    We looked at the 301 high schools with the most applicants to U-M. Here's what we found

    Created data visuals and analyzed FOIA request data on university feeder high schools. Used Python and D3.

  • Graphic showing the proportions of youth ethnic group populations in Texas and their vaccination rates. Asian and white children receive a higher share of vaccinations.
    Familiar racial disparities emerge in first month of COVID-19 vaccinations for the youngest Texans

    Created a data graphic in Illustrator on vaccination rates among Texas children. Contributed to data-heavy writing.

  • Choropleth map of Ann Arbor showing results from a 2021 election.
    City of Ann Arbor 2021 Special Election Results

    Created a tracker in Python to retrieve live election results. Built a page to show results in Svelte.

Other

Here is a collection of personal and academic work I've produced.

  • A treemap showing different portions of my computer storage.
    Taxonomy of a computer

    Wrote a visual brief on my computer usage. Made with D3 and Scrollama.

  • A colored grid of rectangles laid out as a calendar.
    September of BeReal

    Created a graphic showing my BeReal usage over a month. Made with D3.

  • A figure composed of several police officers with tactical uniforms and riot gear. The figure is outlined by a green rectangle labeled "Police Officer" and another labeled "Soldier."
    Police Officer (Soldier)

    Made with Photoshop.

  • A grid of Grammy winners. White winners are labeled as "People like me," whereas winners of color are labeled with their names.
    GRAMMY (People like me)

    Made with Processing.

  • A bubble chart with circles of various sizes and colors signifying number of visits to different websites.
    98 Days on the Internet

    Wrote a visual story about my Internet history. Used Scrollama and D3.

  • An assortment of rare house plants.
    Rare Botanist

    Created an automated Reddit bot to monitor house plant transactions between 14,000 members. Made with Python.

  • A bubble map of the United States showing populations covered by external investigations into police use of force.
    U.S. police agencies with external investigations into injurious use of force

    An exploration of Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (2016) in Observable.

Talks