Work

Independent research, internships, student work and software projects.

Explore

Experience

Systems & AI

AI Systems Engineer Intern

Northfield Mount Hermon
JUN 23–AUG 1, 2025

Delivered a working AI-assistant prototype and demonstrated it with a faculty account. Configured NVIDIA Jetson Orin, adapted Open WebUI, and integrated school-account authentication and role-specific ChromaDB retrieval. The intended audience was 600+ students and faculty; I left before public deployment.

Design & Research

HCI Design Intern

Humanist LLC
SUMMER 2024

Handled the Bookkeeper receipt-app effort end to end. Conducted research with small-business owners, designed user flows and prototypes, and developed a camera-to-entry workflow with OCR and automated categorization. Bookkeeper below describes the same product effort.

Projects

Projects

Systems & AI

Seed

Independent research on AI overassistance and collaboration. I handle research, development, execution, analysis and writing. Completed exploratory model studies examine request scope, uncertainty and authorization. Natural-message replay is partial and paused; the later tested-assistant main study is unrun. No human study or publication is established.

Independent Research · Model Evaluation · 2026

Design & Research

Neural Link

An HCDE 302/303 team project on focus and belonging for international students with ADHD-associated needs. I contributed equally across research and design. The team engaged eight students over 20 weeks and iterated toward peer support and collaborative accountability.

Team UX Research · Prototyping · Sep 2025–Mar 2026

iOS & Native

Notable

A published SwiftUI text editor with pile-based organization, semantic search, a custom embedding cache and CloudKit sync. Reached 2,165 downloads as of October 8, 2026, based on my App Store count.

SwiftUI · SwiftData · CloudKit

Web & Platforms

TeleCoach

Contributed browser-side data management, optional PostgreSQL research-data uploads, configurable sharing controls and a SvelteKit 2 migration. Acknowledged for code development in Chen et al. (2026); this is a software contribution, with no co-authorship or clinical-trial role claimed.

SvelteKit · TypeScript · IndexedDB · PostgreSQL

Systems & AI

Foresight OCR / Ousu.ai

A genealogy OCR and family-document archive effort built for my father. Separated layout parsing from text recognition, handled cross-page entries, and preserved source scans, machine output and human corrections. My father reviewed the workflow on two roughly 200-page books.

OCR · Structured Output · Human Review

Web & Platforms

Resort Assistant

An ongoing volunteer project for a commercial ski resort. Building an embeddable FAQ assistant with streamed chat, tool-backed conditions and pricing, query logging, and a structured Microsoft SQL Server knowledge store. Evaluation includes missing-information and unsuitable-recommendation cases.

Volunteer Project · LLM Integration · SQL Server

iOS & Native

Bookkeeper / Humanist

The receipt-app effort behind my Humanist internship. I handled the app end to end, building a camera-to-entry workflow with OCR, GPT-4 Vision, structured JSON output, ten expense categories and multi-currency support. SwiftUI, Core Data and CloudKit support the interface and persistence.

SwiftUI · OCR · Core Data · CloudKit

Design & Research

Museum of Flight

An HCDE 308 student identity concept, including typography, a wordmark and ticketing interfaces. David Han contributed the combination mark and preceding shared brand work. I specified, reviewed and refined the SvelteKit ticketing prototype.

Student Concept · Brand Identity · SvelteKit

Systems & AI

Curatorr

A personal Plex tool with explainable retention recommendations. Its weighted score accounts for viewing history, episode-normalized use, size and age, while protecting permanent, recent and unfinished items and withholding candidates when history is missing or stale.

Personal Project · Scoring · Data Validation

Systems & AI

Canvas2Things

A personal automation that imports Canvas assignments into Things 3 with notes, deadlines and checklists. Duplicate prevention and Inbox capture preserve control over task organization.

Automation · AppleScript · URL Schemes

iOS & Native

newmoon

Co-developed a fork of Fullmoon with OpenAI-compatible API connectivity, web-search support and an interface for tool-calling models. The app remains in use by the collaborators; active code contributions had stopped as of October 8, 2026.

Collaborative Fullmoon Fork · Native Apple UI

Web & Platforms

Shift-C

A JavaScript tool generating sleep-schedule transition plans from current and target wake times, with .ics calendar export. Addressed server/client timezone differences and overnight date rollover.

JavaScript · Calendar Export

iOS & Native

The Bement School App

Independently developed a Swift/UIKit app for library resources, menus and newsletters, working with school administration and IT. Integrated Firebase notifications and a Create ML campus-building recognition feature, and managed App Store review and deployment.

Swift · UIKit · Firebase · Create ML

Web & Platforms

CMHT Portfolio

Rebuilt an art portfolio to replace Wix, using a minimal layout with attention to high-resolution image performance.

SvelteKit · Web Development

Systems & AI

ESLint Config

Maintain an opinionated lint configuration for SvelteKit and TypeScript projects.

SvelteKit · TypeScript · Developer Tools

Portfolio

Collaborations

This Website is Accessible
Design & Research

This Website is Accessible

Contributed to an accessibility-focused website designed around WCAG-oriented navigation.

Untitled Website
Web & Platforms

Untitled Website

Collaborated on a modular UI foundation for technical resumes and blogs.

© 2026 Runkai Zhang