Open to embedded, robotics, and software engineering internships
Zihan Zhao
goes by Zien / Penn State CSE 2027 / State College, PA
I like embedded development, backend engineering, and machine learning.
Currently doing sleep research with wearable sensor data, and building perception and control code for autonomous vehicle system on Penn State Advanced Vehicle Team.
UPLINK
SYSTEM SPEC
- Degree
- BS Computer Science, Penn State
- Minors
- Computer Engineering, Eng. Leadership
- Graduating
- May 2027
- Languages
- Python / C / C++ / Java / JavaScript / SQL / Verilog
- Stack
- Node, ROS 2, PyTorch, XGBoost, Linux, Git
- Focus
- full stack, embedded, applied ML, AI Agent
SELECTED WORK
-
Autonomous vehicle perception stack
Embedded Software Engineer / Penn State Advanced Vehicle Team / 2026 to present
Perception and control pipelines fusing LiDAR, camera and GPS, integrated onto edge compute hardware for a competition autonomous EV platform.
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Sleep staging from wrist motion
Undergraduate Researcher / Penn State / 2025 to present
ML pipeline classifying sleep stages from accelerometry alone across three devices and 190k epochs, plus the diagnostic showing a pooled model can shortcut by identifying the device instead of the physiology.
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Unified social analytics API
Backend Developer / The Daily Collegian / September 2025 to September 2026
One REST service fronting Facebook Graph, X API v2 and Instagram. Implemented OAuth 1.0a user-level auth on X to pull native impression metrics the standard API tier does not expose, behind a shared router architecture built to add platforms without touching the core.
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Inertial navigation simulator
Software Engineering Intern / LANXIN Technology / Summer 2025
Multithreaded IMU and GPS emulation for high-speed rail, with configurable noise, drift and output rate driven by a scheduled executor, plus a live GUI for tuning parameters mid-run.