Aspiring AI Scientist

Shuzhen Zhang

M.S. Statistics student at the University of Washington and B.S. Mathematics student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Here is my playground for sharing some information for people who want to know more about me academically. In my childhood, I always imagine how world will be different when AI and robotic become wildly used in human world. Now, the AI epoch is coming, I am passiobn to see that happen and want to be part of it. Lets work together to make the history 😆

Amazon University of Washington University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Research Assistant
Python • R • PyTorch/HuggingFace Unsupervised learning & embeddings Experimentation & evaluation

Project-first highlights for fast recruiter scanning.

FNO-Diffusion for Brain MRI Segmentation

Problem: Improve segmentation quality for BraTS 2021 MRI volumes under multi-modal uncertainty.

Method: Compared baseline FNO, diffusion U-shape, and an FNO-Diffusion hybrid with aligned evaluation.

Result: Built a case-study workflow showing where hybrid modeling improves robustness across regions.

Medical AIDiffusionFNO PyTorch

IMDb Sentiment Analysis: RNN vs Pretrained Transformers

Problem: Compare RNN baseline quality against pretrained transformers on IMDb sentiment.

Method: BiLSTM vs DistilGPT-2/XLNet with built-in vs MLP heads and max-length ablations.

Result: XLNet reached 0.9578 TestAccuracy; longer context helped with diminishing returns after ~1024 tokens.

PythonPyTorchHuggingFace NLPStatistics

AI Simulation with Mistral + Mixtral (ATLAS Showcase)

Problem: Simulate realistic NPC action choices under hard room-access constraints.

Method: Prompt and task-design experiments with Mistral 7B and Mixtral 8x7B, plus GPT/Claude comparison checks.

Result: Produced a prototype workflow that reduced invalid action outputs on constrained assignments.

LLMMistral 7BMixtral 8x7B Prompt EngineeringSimulation

Experience Snapshot

UIUC-ATLAS | Machine Learning Analyzer

Champaign, IL · May 2023 - May 2024

  • Replicated a GPT-based AI town simulation using Mistral 7B / Mixtral 8x7B with a GPT-2 tokenizer from a research paper.
  • Rewrote query and algorithm logic from the original repository and analyzed NPC action behavior.
  • Designed prompt-engineering experiments to study conditional probability weaknesses in filtered AI outputs.

Manifold Learning Research | Contributor

Seattle, WA · Jul. 2024 - Present

  • Contributed standardized plotting and unsupervised embedding construction workflows for manifold learning studies.
  • Developed distortion visualization on C. elegans data to analyze density effects and neighborhood breaks.
  • Supported publication work on interactive metric-distortion visualization for nonlinear embeddings.

Amazon | Jr. Applied Scientist

Seattle, WA · Oct. 2024 - Present

  • Contributed to experimentation and analysis workflows tied to recommendation/embedding initiatives.
  • Built robust data processing steps for evaluation datasets and metric monitoring.
  • Communicated model tradeoffs and impact risks to technical and cross-functional stakeholders.

Skills

ML / Stats

Unsupervised learning, representation learning, GLM/LMM/GEE, statistical inference, experimental design, and evaluation metrics.

Tools

Python, R, PyTorch, HuggingFace, Shiny, Git, SQL.

Work Style

Reproducibility, clean code, and clear communication with research and product teams.

Contact

Open to applied scientist / ML engineer opportunities and research collaborations.