Experience — Yaoyao (Freax) Qian

Research, machine learning engineering, and teaching roles held by Yaoyao Qian.

Research Collaborator, Intelligent Embodied Systems Laboratory, University of Central Florida

2025-11-01 – Present · Orlando, FL (Remote)

Working with Prof. Mingyo Seo since Nov 2025; the collaboration continued into his Intelligent Embodied Systems Laboratory when he joined UCF as an Assistant Professor in Sep 2026.

    Research Staff Member, Growing AI Like A Child

    2025-11-01 – 2026-01-31 · Remote

    • Contribute to the Very Big Video Reasoning (VBVR) project, building large-scale video reasoning datasets and benchmarks.

    Research Staff Member, Information Technology Ethics & Accessibility (iTEA) Lab, University of Texas at San Antonio

    2025-04-01 – Present · San Antonio, TX (Remote)

    • Collaborate with Prof. Kyrie Zhixuan Zhou on ethical AI and accessibility research initiatives.
    • Prototype LLM-powered support workflows to improve digital accessibility for marginalized communities.
    • Contribute qualitative analyses capturing practitioner perspectives on responsible AI deployment.

    Graduate Teaching Assistant, Northeastern University MGEN

    2025-01-01 – 2025-04-20 · Boston, MA

    • Support ENGR 0201 "Organizing Academic Success: AI for Personalized Learning".
    • Coach students on AI-driven study planning tools and responsible deployment workflows.
    • Host workshop-style office hours to deliver individualized technical guidance.

    Research Assistant, Information Experience & Accessibility Lab, UIUC

    2024-05-01 – 2025-05-01 · Champaign, IL (Remote)

    • Investigate FinTech accessibility for older adults, designing inclusive financial workflows.
    • Prototype PAT PAT, an emotional-support virtual pet that blends ML-driven personalization with playful UX.
    • Explore generative-AI assistants for mHealth applications that encourage healthy routines.

    Research Assistant, The Helping Hands Lab, Northeastern University

    2023-11-10 – 2025-12-01 · Boston, MA

    Focus: open-world manipulation, grasping with LLM planning, and equivariant control policies.

    • Develop safe-Z aware SE(2) grasp planners that halve training epochs while boosting reliability.
    • Build ThinkGrasp, a GPT-4o-guided grasping agent reaching 98% success in clutter and improving robustness 50% over baselines.
    • Introduce imagination-driven key-frame policies that raise RLBench manipulation success by 20%.

    Machine Learning Engineer Co-op, Lendbuzz

    2024-10-07 – 2024-12-31 · Boston, MA

    • Integrated vLLM into production inference, cutting response latency by 175%.
    • Curated high-quality dialogue-intent labels to sharpen domain fine-tuning.
    • Partnered with product teams to align ML deliverables with lending-risk KPIs.

    Research Assistant, CHATS Lab (Conversation, Human-AI Technology, Security)

    2024-09-17 – 2025-01-15 · Northeastern University

    • Study multimodal interactive AI systems that blend speech, gesture, and safety-aware behaviours.
    • Prototype privacy-preserving pipelines for conversational data collection.
    • Evaluate user trust and security posture of next-gen dialog agents.

    Technical Manager, Zhejiang Chongxiao Zhong Han Medical Technology Co.

    2020-05-13 – 2021-09-01 · Hangzhou, China

    • Shipped a Spring Boot + Vue enterprise management platform covering pre-sales, ops, and project workflows.
    • Designed requirements, drew prototypes, and orchestrated cross-functional delivery for multiple modules.
    • Boosted commercial team efficiency by centralising itinerary and customer data.

    Research Assistant, Wenzhou University of Technology

    2020-04-01 – 2020-05-01 · Wenzhou, China

    • Modelled soccer passing networks via social graph analytics to study coordination strategies.
    • Applied degree centrality to highlight playmakers in historic Huskies matches.
    • Demonstrated teamwork dynamics outweigh individual performance in match outcomes.

    Research Assistant, Institute of Modeling and Data Mining, Wenzhou University

    2019-07-01 – 2019-12-01 · Wenzhou, China

    • Scraped Amazon reviews and built sentiment pipelines with TextBlob.
    • Generated shopper personas using WordCloud visual analytics.
    • Explored feature engineering for large-scale e-commerce feedback.

    Technical Leader, Wenzhou Bopu Institute of Big Data

    2018-12-01 – 2019-01-01 · Wenzhou, China

    • Built public-opinion analytics pipelines for regional news outlets.
    • Implemented dictionary-based sentiment classifiers and knowledge graph structuring.
    • Applied TextRank4ZH for topical tracking and delivered hotspot dashboards.

    Technical Leader, MIE DEMO Studio

    2018-12-01 – 2019-01-01 · Wenzhou, China

    • Directed a national innovation training program for college engineering teams.
    • Launched a mobile-friendly volunteer management platform for party member initiatives.
    • Managed server infrastructure, QA, and iterative improvements across studio projects.