Experience — Yaoyao (Freax) Qian

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

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.