Tingting Zhao

Tingting Zhao has several years of work experience, starting with a role as a Graduate Research Assistant at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from January 2016 to May 2016. They then worked as a Data Scientist Intern at Microsoft from August 2015 to October 2015. After that, they returned to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as a Graduate Research and Teaching Assistant from January 2016 to May 2016. Tingting also worked as a Resident Fellow at the National Water Center from June 2015 to July 2015, where they developed a data-driven model and built web services for prediction models. From August 2016 to May 2017, Tingting worked as a Graduate Research Assistant at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where they built real-time river modeling systems. They then joined Microsoft as a Senior Data & Applied Scientist from July 2017 to April 2023, focusing on NLP-based pipeline and AI/ML solutions in various industries. Currently, Tingting works as a Staff Applied Scientist at Outreach, starting in May 2023.

Tingting Zhao received their formal education in civil engineering and environmental/environmental health engineering. Tingting started their academic journey in 2007 at Tongji University, where they obtained a Bachelor of Engineering (B.E.) degree in Environmental/Environmental Health Engineering in 2011. Following this, they pursued further studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, earning a Master of Science (M.S.) degree in Environmental/Environmental Health Engineering in 2014. Tingting continued their education at the same institution and completed their Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Civil Engineering in 2017. In addition to their academic degrees, they acquired several certifications, including Convolutional Neural Networks and Sequence Models from Coursera in August 2018. Furthermore, they obtained a Graduate Specification in Computational Science and Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in September 2017.