I’m on the academic job market this year, and have spent the last few months writing (and rewriting) application materials. It’s a process that really makes you figure out who you are as a researcher and it’s turned out to be surprisingly useful and fun. I designed a diagram of my research areas (actually, credits to Ariana for the final image, she made it in ChemDraw!) and I’m really happy with the way it turned out! See below (this is Figure 2 in my research statement):
I am thinking of making some visualizations of my research in other ways, maybe not for the research statement, but perhaps for my website. I have spreadsheet data for all the papers I’ve ever submitted, with conference tiers, rejections, areas, etc. and that could make for some interesting summary tables.