Zhilan Zhou
Research Fellow · NIE, Nanyang Technological University

Zhilan
Zhou

An HCI researcher at heart. I study how people focus, perceive, and decide with visual analytic tools, working across psychology, linguistics, epistemology, and education.

Email CV ORCID Scholar
Hand-drawn self-portrait of Zhilan Zhou as a sleepy cat
Self-portraitInk on paper, drawn by me.
01

About

I am a Research Fellow at the National Institute of Education (NIE), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, where I lead the development of interactive visual analytics systems that use emotion recognition to support teaching and learning in classrooms.

I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2024, advised by David Gotz. My dissertation, An Examination of Analytic Focus and Perception during Exploratory Visual Analysis, looks at how visualization systems can model what users are paying attention to, how to surface relevant content from that, and how priming and anchoring shape what people conclude.

Before that, I worked on UI virtualization for smartwatches with Don Porter, built clinical checklist software at the UNC Department of Radiation Oncology, and spent time as a visiting student at the HKUST VisLab.

Visual AnalyticsHuman–Computer InteractionAnalytic FocusCognitive Bias in VisContent RecommendationLearning AnalyticsAffective Computing
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Updates

  • 2026New preprint on arXiv: CausaDisco brings Aristotle’s Four Causes into LLM dialogue for self-learning.
  • 2025Joined the National Institute of Education, NTU as a Research Fellow.
  • 2024Completed my Ph.D. in Computer Science at UNC Chapel Hill.
  • 2023Visiting student at the HKUST VisLab; Knowledge Compass presented at UIST Adjunct.
  • 2023Started reviewing for IEEE TVCG.
  • 2022Received the Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-financed Students Abroad.
  • 2022Presented our design space for content recommendations at IEEE VIS.
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Publications

2026

Enhanced Self-Learning with Epistemologically-Informed LLM Dialogue

Yi-Fan Cao, Kento Shigyo, Yitong Gu, Xiyuan Wang, Weijia Liu, Yang Wang, David Gotz, Zhilan Zhou, Huamin Qu
arXiv preprint arXiv:2604.10545. Submitted to the International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction
arXiv ’26Corresponding authorPaper
2023

Knowledge Compass: A Question Answering System Guiding Students with Follow-Up Question Recommendations

Rui Sheng, Leni Yang, Haotian Li, Yan Luo, Ziyang Xu, Zhilan Zhou, David Gotz, Huamin Qu
Adjunct Proceedings of the 36th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST), 1–4
UIST ’23 AdjunctPaper

Grafs: Graphical Faceted Search System to Support Conceptual Understanding in Exploratory Search

Mengtian Guo, Zhilan Zhou, David Gotz, Yue Wang
ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems
ACM TiiSPaper
2022

A Design Space for Surfacing Content Recommendations in Visual Analytic Platforms

Zhilan Zhou, Wenyuan Wang, Mengtian Guo, Yue Wang, David Gotz
IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (Proc. IEEE VIS)
IEEE TVCG / VISFirst authorPaper
2021

Modeling and Leveraging Analytic Focus during Exploratory Visual Analysis

Zhilan Zhou, Ximing Wen, Yue Wang, David Gotz
Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–15
ACM CHI ’21First authorPaper
2020

A Survey of Patterns for Adapting Smartphone App UIs to Smart Watches

Zhilan Zhou, Jian Xu, Aruna Balasubramanian, Donald E. Porter
22nd International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services, 1–11
MobileHCI ’20First authorPaper
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Research experience

  • 2025 — now

    Nanyang Technological University

    Research Fellow, National Institute of Education

    Leading the development of interactive visual analytics systems built on emotion recognition algorithms designed for classroom environments.

  • 2022 — 2024

    UNC Chapel Hill

    Dissertation research, advised by David Gotz
    • Summarized how visualization systems surface relevant information to users and introduced a design space for content recommendation.
    • Investigated priming and anchoring effects on visual analytic platforms.
  • 2023

    Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

    Visiting Student, VisLab

    Collaborated on a project to improve the learning process in K-12 education, which led to one publication.

  • 2020 — 2021

    School of Information and Library Science, UNC

    Research Assistant with David Gotz

    Modeled users’ analytic focus during visual analysis of medical data and used it to recommend medical literature that puts the data in context.

  • 2019

    Department of Radiation Oncology, UNC School of Medicine

    Research Assistant with Lukasz Mazur

    Built an electronic checklist system for physicists and dosimetrists that replaced long-standing paper checklists and automatically checks some radiation doses for correctness. Worked closely with clinicians on patient safety and treatment quality.

  • 2017 — 2018

    Department of Computer Science, UNC

    Research Assistant with Don Porter

    Led a project on a UI porting system that supports different interactions on multiple devices with a shared runtime backend, part of an NSF project on UI virtualization.

  • 2015 — 2016

    Department of Computer Science, UNC

    Undergraduate Researcher with Tamara Berg

    Image category prediction with Caffe; Kinect data collection with the Microsoft SDK in C++; an alpha site for a human-tagged indoor image database.

Industry & early research

  • 2016

    EAVision, California

    Software Engineering Intern

    Globalization and localization for the UAV control software UAVision (C#, Windows); a C++ FTP client/server between the drone (Ubuntu) and the ground station.

  • 2016

    UNC Chapel Hill

    Research Assistant

    Maintained a histology database for deep-learning cell classification, as part of a study on male reproduction in the Collaborative Cross founder strains.

  • 2015

    Cheetah Mobile, Beijing

    Software Engineering Intern

    Built screen-saver animation and interface features for the Android app Clean Master (Java).

05

Education

  • 2020 — 2024

    Ph.D. in Computer Science

    The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

    An Examination of Analytic Focus and Perception during Exploratory Visual Analysis. Advisor: David Gotz.

  • 2017 — 2020

    M.S. in Computer Science

    The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

    UI Virtualization on Smartwatches. Advisor: Don Porter.

  • 2014 — 2017

    B.S. in Computer Science

    The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

    Highest Distinction. Minors in Mathematics and Japanese.

06

Teaching & Service

Teaching & mentoring

  • 2025–26Mentor, Nanyang Research Programme (NRP), NTU. Two junior college students.
  • 2023Mentor, junior graduate students, HKUST VisLab
  • 2019Teaching Assistant, Algorithms and Analysis, UNC CS. Guest lecture on BFS and DFS.

Service

  • 2023–Reviewer, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics

Talks

  • 2022IEEE VIS, paper presentation
  • 2021ACM CHI, paper presentation
  • 2020ACM MobileHCI, paper presentation
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Etc.

Honors & training

  • 2022Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-financed Students Abroad
  • 2021CRA-WP Grad Cohort for Women, Computing Research Association

Languages

Chinese
Native English
Advanced Japanese
JLPT N1 Italian
Novice