Professional Summary
A veteran data-driven researcher in algorithm auditing, social computing and responsible AI, working on evaluation and measurement of AI systems like Google Search by large-scale data analysis, experimental design, metric design, natural language processing, and applied machine learning.
Education
University of Zurich (UZH)
Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Science (Transferred)
October 2022 - Present
Zurich, Switzerland
Advisors: Prof. Aniko Hannak & Prof. Christo Wilson
Northeastern University (NEU)
Ph.D. Candidate, Computer Science
September 2017 - August 2022
Boston, MA, USA
GPA: 3.945/4.0 | Advisor: Prof. Christo Wilson
Northwestern Polytechnical University (NPU)
B.Eng. & M.Eng., Software Engineering
September 2010 - March 2017
Xi'an, China
Work Experience
Research Assistant
October 2022 - Present
University of Zurich, Switzerland
AI System Quality Audit and Evaluation
- Developed data pipelines and web crawlers to build large datasets for audit
- Designed six metrics to evaluate and benchmark LLMs and information retrieval (IR) systems
- Ran large scale experiments on cloud platforms to evaluate LLM quality (e.g., factual consistency) and identified issues, e.g., over 30% inconsistency between Google's LLM (AI Overview) and IR results
Explainable AI (XAI) for LLM Bias in Text Classification
- Integrated XAI techniques to analyze transformer-based LLMs in text classification
- Assessed fine-tuned and few-shot models to reveal disparities in explanation, highlighting bias risks
Research Intern
June 2019 - September 2019
USC Information Science Institute, Marina del Rey, CA, USA
Language Analysis (Mentor: Emilio Ferrara)
- Trained Word2Vec models to build fine-grained hate-speech lexicons for language toxicity evaluation
- Studied user behavior via temporal dynamics & network structure
Research Assistant
September 2017 - September 2022
Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA
Google Search Comparison
- Designed and implemented a distributed web crawler system to automatically identify search functionalities & schema across 158K+ websites
- Analysis of how users interact with search engines on various websites (Paper published at ICWSM 2024 and won the Honorable Mention Award)
Auditing the Partisanship of Google Search Snippets
- Constructed a lexicon of partisan cues to measure political leanings
- Measurement of partisanship of Google's website summarization and actual website content
Hackathon Projects
AI Tutor - VIScon 2025 Hackathon (3rd Prize)
October 2025, Zurich
- Core developer for a web-based, LLM-powered tutor (Next.js frontend, FastAPI backend) with PostgreSQL and Qdrant vector DB
- Integrated Google Gemini-2.5-flash for automated problem extraction and generation; implemented AI-powered hints and fine-grained feedback
Accessible and Frugal AI Model - Swiss AI Hackathon (Lead Developer)
September 2025, Zurich
- Built knowledge distillation pipeline: automated domain discovery, LoRA-based parameter-efficient fine-tuning for domain expert models, dynamic routing
- Achieved >90% memory reduction and >95% cost savings
Selected Publications
Published over 10 papers primarily on evaluation and measurement of AI systems (e.g., Google Search) and digital platforms (e.g., YouTube) in top conferences such as WWW, WebSci, and ICWSM.
Auditing Google's AI Overviews and Featured Snippets: A Case Study on Baby Care and Pregnancy
The 20th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM 2026), May 2026, Los Angeles, CA, USA
To appear
Market or Markets? Investigating Google Search's Market Shares Under Vertical Segmentation
The 18th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM 2024), June 2024, Buffalo, NY, USA
Best Paper Honorable Mention Award*: Equal Contribution | Findings presented at the Trust & Safety Research Conference at Stanford University | UZH IFI News Report
U.S. Users' Exposure to YouTube Videos On- and Off-platform
The 16th ACM Web Science Conference 2024 (WebSci 2024), May 21-24, 2024, Stuttgart, Germany
Google the Gatekeeper: How Search Components Affect Clicks and Attention
The 17th International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM 2023), Limassol, Cyprus
Best Paper AwardAuditing the Partisanship of Google Search Snippets
The 2019 Web Conference (WWW 2019), May 13-17, 2019, San Francisco, CA, USA
Invited talk at Twitter Inc.'s headquarter office at San Francisco
Fault Localization Analysis Based on Deep Neural Network
Mathematical Problems in Engineering
Technical Skills
Programming Languages
ML Frameworks
Python Libraries
LLM Models
AI Orchestration
Engineering
Systems & Infrastructure
Visualization
Teaching Experience
- Teaching Assistant - Seminar: Algorithmic Auditing (MSc), University of Zurich (Fall 2024)
- Teaching Assistant - Natural Language Processing, Northeastern University (Fall 2020, Spring 2021)
- Teaching Assistant - Data Mining Techniques, Northeastern University (Summer 2021, Fall 2021)
Academic Service
Program Committee & Reviewer for:
Awards & Honors
AAAI ICWSM Best Paper Honorable Mention Award
June 2024
AAAI ICWSM Best Paper Award
June 2023
NEU Graduate Assistantship
$70,609 USD per year
2017 - 2022
National Scholarship & NPU Merit Graduate Student & NPU Fellowship
Top 1% of students
October 2016
VIScon 2025 Hackathon - 3rd Prize
AI Tutor Project (150+ participants)
October 2025, Zurich
Links & Location
Google Scholar
View PublicationsGitHub
@whocheersLocation
Department of Informatics
University of Zurich
Andreasstrasse 15
8050 Zurich, Switzerland
Beyond Research
When I'm not working on research, I enjoy cooking, hip-hop dancing, and paragliding.