Zixin (Nicole) Zhao

My name is Zixin (read as zee-shin) and I am also occasionally Nicole. I'm currently a PhD student in Computer Science at the University of Toronto under the joint supervision of Fanny Chevalier and Gerald Penn. I previously completed a MSc at Ontario Tech University under the supervision of Christopher Collins developing a gaze based reading aid for language learners. I completed a BSc majoring in Electrical Engineering and minoring in Computing Science.

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Research

I'm interested in human computer interaction, visualization, and natural language processing. Most of my prior works focus on language learning and my recent work is on analyzing fiction text.

AdVizor: Using Visual Explanations to Guide Data-Driven Student Advising
Riley Weagant, Zixin Zhao, Adam Bradley, Christopher Collins
EduVis 2024  
paper

Visualization to suport advisors with exploring student outcome predictions during academic advising sessions.

Make it Happier! Discretizing and Amplifying Happiness in Animated Faces
Zixin Zhao, Jessica Bo, Karan Singh
GI 2024   (Poster)
project page

Mapping out levels of happiness using non-linear FACS to control AUs and create realistic smiling faces.

Gloss Positioning for a Gaze Aware L2 Reading Aid
Zixin Zhao, Christopher Collins
Master's Thesis, 2023
paper / bibtex

Language learning application for reading in your second language where definitions and translations of words that the system thinks you don't know shows up automatically.

Covid Connect: Chat-Driven Anonymous Story-Sharing for Peer Support
Christopher Collins, Simone Arbour, Nathan Beals, Shawn Yama, Jennifer Laffier, Zixin Zhao
DIS, 2022
project page / paper / bibtex

Using a reflective chatbot to connect community members together during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Negative language transfer in learner English: A new dataset
Leticia Farias Wanderley, Nicole Zhao, and Carrie Demmans Epp
NAACL, 2021
paper / bibtex

Dataset annotated with negative transfer related errors made by Chinese learners of English.

Miscellanea

Instructor, Her Code Camp, Curriculum development and teaching, Aug 2024 - present
Panelist, Web-Based Surveys - Battling the Bots, Research Roundtable Series, 2024
Judge, GenAI Genesis, 2024

This website is based on Jon Barron's code