About me

Hi! This is Zihang, you can also call me River.

I am currently pursuing a Master's degree in Computer Science at UC San Diego.

Outside the classroom, I have completed two internships centered on AI chatbots and web development . At Siemens, I enhanced my skills in data processing, data visualization, and SQL. At Tatum Games, I expanded my web development expertise by working with JavaScript, CSS, HTML, and PHP. Additionally, I have worked on projects such as a Real-time Gobang Game, sentiment analysis, financial forecasting, and a 3D multiplayer online game from scratch, handling everything from coding the engine in C++ to designing gameplay interactions.

Academically, Iā€™m also deeply involved in research. I have independently developed a year-long project on robotics and reinforcement learning, published a paper on conversational recommender systems in AAAI, and contributed to a computer vision dataset published by ECCV.

My interests

  • Web development icon

    Research

    I have a wide array of interests in machine learning. My current focus is centered on database for machine learning systems, recommender systems and generative AI.

  • Web development icon

    Ongoing Projects

    - Building a 3D soft robotics dataset and employing reinforcement learning to predict motion within this dataset.

  • mobile app icon

    Drawing

    I love art and I'm can do oil painting, watercolor, sketch, currently I'm passionate in digital painting and has a huge interest in the intersection of technology and art.

Resume

Click to view/download resume in English. (Updated August. 2024)


Education

  1. University of California, San Diego

    Sept. 2024 - June 2026 (Expected)

    M.S. Computer Science and Engineering

  2. University of California, San Diego

    Sept. 2020 - June 2024

    B.S. Computer Science and Engineering (3.93/4.0)

Research Experiences

  1. UCSD Safe Autonomous Systems Lab

    Research Assistant

    Sep. 2022 ā€” Present

    - Developed predictive models for soft robotics using Python, integrating Graph Neural Networks and reinforcement learning techniques to enhance the accuracy and efficiency of motion predictions.
    - Utilized PyBullet for dynamic robotics simulation and PyGame for real-time visualization, supporting the creation of complex datasets for AI training and evaluation.

  2. UCSD Recommender Systems Lab

    Research Assistant

    Feb. 2023 ā€” Feb. 2024

    - Developed RecWizard, an open-source toolkit for conversational recommender systems. Designed the framework to be LLM-friendly and Hugging Face compatible, enhancing user flexibility. (Paper accepted by AAAI 2024).
    - Implemented the KGSF recommendation and generation module within the designed framework.

  3. UCLA Mobility Lab

    Research Assistant

    May 2023 ā€” Feb. 2024

    - Building the first real-world vehicle-to-everything cooperative perception dataset supporting transmitting neural network features among multi-agent system to boost the perception capability.
    - Contributed to the development of the first real-world vehicle-to-everything (V2X) cooperative perception dataset; responsibilities included data preparation and validation. (Paper accepted by ECCV 2024).

Internship Experiences

  1. Siemens

    Data Analytics Intern

    June 2023 - Sept. 2023

    - Contributed to building the AI chatbot for Siemens utilizing the Langchain framework; initiated data collection via web crawling, processed data, and architected the entire codebase. Further refined document retrieval methods by leveraging technical terms, categorizing user queries, and tailoring prompts for optimized responses.
    - Independently developed a business forecasting project, using Keras and Optuna for automated hyperparameter selection; implemented 12 advanced models such as multiheadCNN and ConvLSTM. Thoroughly documented and packaged the solution, creating a user-friendly template for both developers and non-developers, and it is used widely by different departments within Siemens.

  2. Tatum Games

    Web Developer Intern

    Jan. 2022 - Apr. 2022

    - Worked as a web developer intern to address various tickets in a Jira environment, contributed to the resolution of issues, worked on webapp using JavaScript, PHP, CSS, and user interface features.

  3. Mentor Global Consultant

    Intern

    Feb. 2022 - May. 2022

    Conducted research on metaverse use cases and blockchain technology, including reading articles, interviewing CEOs, applying data analysis and visualization on a metaverse twitter dataset

Skills

  1. Programming

    Python, Java, C, C++, Unix shell, Git

  2. Web development

    HTML, Javascript, React, Node.js, CSS, SQL

  3. Machine learning and data analysis

    PyTorch, TensorFlow, Matlab, R, SPSS

Research

Drawings

šŸ„ŗ Amateur digital artist here.
Half of the drawings are based on works I admire but whose original creator I couldn't identify. If anyone recognizes the original work or artist, please let me know so I can give proper credit.