CV

Education

  • 2023 - present

    Chicago, IL

    Ph.D.
    University of Illinois at Chicago
    Computer Science
  • 2021 - 2023

    Worcester, MA

    M.S.
    Worcester Polytechnic Institute
    Information Technology
  • 2016 - 2020

    Jinan, China

    B.Mgt.
    Shandong University of Finance and Economics
    Management in Information Management and Information Systems

Experience

  • 2024 - present

    Chicago, IL

    Research Assistant
    Electronic Visualization Laboratory, University of Illinois at Chicago
    • Designed and built interactive visual analytics systems that turn large-scale spatio-temporal biomedical data into insight domain experts can act on.
    • Applied supervised and unsupervised machine learning, and built the data pipelines that keep high-dimensional analysis reproducible at scale.
  • 2022 - 2023

    Worcester, MA

    Research Assistant
    U.S. Army DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory
    • Stabilized a cross-platform research system by resolving integration failures across its mobile frameworks.
    • Optimized the iOS and Android build and dependency pipelines to make cross-device experimentation repeatable.
  • 2022 - 2022

    Worcester, MA

    Research Assistant
    Worcester Polytechnic Institute
    • Characterized community structure in large-scale Twitter data using social network analysis with Louvain community detection.
    • Built a TF-IDF and LSA pipeline for topic extraction, projecting the results with UMAP for visual inspection.
  • 2021 - 2021

    Harbin, China

    Full-Stack Engineer Intern
    Hsoft Corporation, Limited
    • Built a COVID-19 monitoring dashboard for the Harbin Police Office in Vue.js, backed by data models handling 500,000+ concurrent records.
    • Replaced naive rendering of large hierarchical data with virtualized lists, improving front-end performance by up to 200%.
  • 2019 - 2019

    Jinan, China

    Front-End Engineer Intern
    Kumi Corporation, Limited
    • Built the front-end architecture for a SaaS platform in Vue.js, including a reusable live-video component serving 2,000+ concurrent users.

Projects

  • Visual Analytics System for Multi-Omics 3D Chromatin Analysis

    01/2026 – Present

    • Interactive system that overlays multi-omics genomic signals onto 3D chromatin structures to explore spatial genome organization.
    • Resolution-aware signal aggregation lets the same analysis scale across genomic resolutions and datasets.
  • Predictive Modeling of Digestive Outcomes in Head and Neck Cancer

    12/2025 – 07/2026

    • Machine learning pipeline predicting post-treatment digestive outcomes from heterogeneous longitudinal clinical data.
    • A feature-partitioned stacking framework separating patient-reported from clinical variables reaches the best performance.
    • Related publication: Dysphagia Risk Stratification (ICMLA 2026) — /publications/#zhao2026dysphagia
  • Spatial Transcriptomics Visual Analytics System for Multi-Sample Tissue Analysis

    01/2025 – 03/2026

    • Visual analytics for multi-sample spatial transcriptomics, unifying 2µm-to-tissue-level data and histology images in one backbone.
    • Coordinated views and pseudo-temporal trajectory analysis compose region-level exploration into tissue-level insight.
    • Related publications: Loom (IEEE VIS 2026) — /publications/#zhao2026loom; A Part-to-Whole Circular Cell Explorer (IEEE BioMedVis 2024) — /publications/#zhao2024parttowhole
  • 3D Chromatin Data Platform for Single-Cell Genomics

    08/2024 – 10/2025

    • Data platform for high-resolution single-cell 3D chromatin structures, pairing database management with 3D visualization.
    • Full-stack build with coordinated multi-view visualizations over sequencing tracks and 3D structures, tuned for large-scale loading.
    • Related publication: ChromPolymerDB (Nucleic Acids Research 2026) — /publications/#chen2026chrompolymerdb
  • Analysis of Human Brain Epilepsy Data

    08/2023 – 06/2024

    • Web-based 3D platform pairing multi-session EEG with anatomical brain models to explore seizure propagation.
    • Temporal network analysis and dynamic community detection reveal how epileptic activity spreads across brain regions.
    • Related publication: Neurosurgery Network Pattern Analysis (Computer Graphics Forum 2026) — /publications/#nipu2026neurosurgery

Skills

Web & Visualization: D3.js, Three.js, WebGL, React.js, Vue.js, Next.js
Machine Learning & Data Analysis: Machine Learning (predictive modeling, supervised & unsupervised learning, regression, classification, clustering, spatiotemporal series forecasting), XGBoost, CatBoost, Big Data pipelines, Statistical Analysis
Programming Languages: JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, R, Dart
Backend & Data: Flask, Node.js, PostgreSQL, Redis, MongoDB, SQLite
Scientific Computing: Pandas, NumPy, scikit-learn, scipy, OpenCV, Pillow, PyTorch, TensorFlow, Keras
Relevant Coursework: Visual Data Science, Visualization and Visual Analytics, Advanced Computer Vision, Neural Networks, Human Computer Interaction, Database Systems

Academic Service

Reviewer: IEEE VIS 2026, CogSci 2026, ISS 2026, IMWUT 2026, IDC 2026, CUI 2026, ICMLA 2026