Zhihan Zhang

I am a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Washington's Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, advised by Prof. Vikram Iyer, Shwetak Patel, and Gregory D. Abowd. I build sustainable and ubiquitous AI that automates scientific and engineering discovery. My research takes an interdisciplinary approach to connect ideas across scientific domains to build end-to-end systems. This includes (1) AI agents that optimize physical hardware and uncover scientific insights from personal health and Earth science; (2) recyclable and circular electronics; and (3) tools that evaluate their environmental impacts and guide sustainable design.

I am on the academic job market for 2026–27, seeking tenure-track faculty positions in computer science and related fields. Please reach out.

My research has been published in leading scientific journals (Nature, Nature Electronics, Nature Sustainability), and premier computer science venues (IMWUT/UbiComp, NeurIPS), and featured in Nature, The Seattle Times, IEEE Spectrum, and the Google Research Blog, among others. Multiple systems and ideas from my research have been deployed or adopted in industry, including contributions to Google's Gemini and sustainability efforts at Google Cloud and Amazon. I am humbled to be a recipient of the Google PhD Fellowship, the Clean Energy Institute Fellowship, a Heidelberg Laureate Forum Young Researcher, and MIT Technology Review's AI25 (AI innovators under 25) China. I created and co-instruct the Sustainable & Ubiquitous AI course, and received the 2025 UW Bob Bandes Award for Excellence in Teaching.

I did a M.S. in Quantitative & Computational Finance and received my B.S. in Computer Engineering with highest honors from Georgia Tech.

Some of my other interests include travel and soccer. When I was in middle school in China, we won the 2016 Zhejiang province middle school soccer championship, and I was named to the all-province team. The team also reached the national quarterfinals that year.