Zhimin (Jimmy) Zhao is a PhD candidate in SAIL@Queen’s, supervised by Dr. Ahmed E. Hassan (ACM/IEEE Fellow). He received his Master degree from CG@Penn and Bachelor degree from ISC@BIT.
🔎 His research focuses on operations and quality assurance for AI/ML systems (LLMOps, MLOps); applying large language models to automate software engineering tasks (AI4SE, LLM4Code); engineering best practices for AI-powered software (SE4AI).
P.S. My Chinese name is “赵志民” and my English name is “Jimmy Zhao.”
Email: z DOT zhao AT queensu DOT ca
📝 Blogs
-
Medium’26 The AGI Paradox: We Might Never Realize AGI, and Here is Why
Zhimin Zhao
Medium, Jan 2026.
[blog]
-
Medium’26 The Vanishing Middle: When Management Becomes the Bottleneck
Zhimin Zhao
Medium, Jan 2026.
[blog]
-
Medium’26 The Missing Rung: Why CS Graduates Are Facing an Invisible Crisis and What to Do About It
Zhimin Zhao
Medium, Feb 2026.
[blog]
-
Medium’26 The Oedipus Paradox of Computer Science: Why AI is Slashing the Value of Your Curriculum Before You Even Graduate
Zhimin Zhao
Medium, Jan 2026.
[blog]
-
Medium’26 When Code Becomes Cheaper Than Debugging: The Rise of Ephemeral Software
Zhimin Zhao
Medium, Feb 2026.
[blog]
📚 Books
-
Tsinghua’26 零基础AI实战指南：基于阿里云百炼的大模型应用开发 (Zero-to-Hero AI Practical Guide: LLM Application Development on Alibaba Cloud Bailian)
Ruchun Jia, Zhimin Zhao
Tsinghua University Press, Under Review, 2026.
[code]
-
Tsinghua’25 从DeepSeek到Manus：大模型与多智能体系统原理与实践 (From DeepSeek to Manus: Principles and Practice of Large Models and Multi-Agent Systems)
Ruchun Jia, Zhimin Zhao
Tsinghua University Press, Under Review, 2025.
[code]
-
Tsinghua’25 生成式人工智能：核心原理与应用 (Generative Artificial Intelligence: Core Principles and Applications)
Ruchun Jia, Qi Wang, Zhimin Zhao
Tsinghua University Press, Under Review, 2025.
[code]
-
Datawhale’24 钥匙书：机器学习理论导引讲解 (Key Book: A Guide to Machine Learning Theory)
Zhan Hao, Zhimin Zhao
Datawhale, 2024.
📝 Papers
-
arXiv’26 Why Code, Why Now: Learnability, Computability, and the Real Limits of Machine Learning
Zhimin Zhao
arXiv preprint, 2026.
[paper]
-
FORGE’25 SE Arena: An Interactive Platform for Evaluating Foundation Models in Software Engineering
Zhimin Zhao
ACM International Conference on AI Foundation Models and Software Engineering, 2025.
-
TSE’25 On the Workflows and Smells of Leaderboard Operations (LBOps): An Exploratory Study of Foundation Model Leaderboards
Zhimin Zhao, Abdul Ali Bangash, Filipe Roseiro Côgo, Bram Adams, Ahmed E. Hassan
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 2025.
-
EMSE’25 Investigating Challenges in How FMware is Developed
Zitao Wang, Zhimin Zhao, Michael W. Godfrey
Empirical Software Engineering, Under Review, 2025.
-
EMSE’25 The State of the SBOM Tools Ecosystem and their Prevalence in OSS: A Comparative Analysis of SPDX and CycloneDX
Abdul Ali Bangash, Tongxu Ge, Zhimin Zhao, Bram Adams
Empirical Software Engineering, Under Review, 2025.
-
EMSE’24 An Empirical Study of Challenges in Machine Learning Asset Management
Zhimin Zhao, Yihao Chen, Abdul Ali Bangash, Bram Adams, Ahmed E. Hassan
Empirical Software Engineering, 2024.
🔧 Open Source Projects
- Software Engineering Arena – Initiator. An interactive platform for evaluating foundation models in software engineering through community-driven pairwise comparisons and Elo-based ranking.
- Easy-Pocket – Initiator. An interactive tutorial for PocketFlow, teaching developers to build chatbots, RAG systems, agents, and workflows using minimal LLM application framework abstractions.
- Awesome Production Machine Learning – Maintainer. A curated list of open-source libraries for deploying, monitoring, versioning, and securing production ML systems.
- Auto-Cap – Maintainer. An interactive benchmark dashboard for evaluating cost, accuracy, and performance of sparse Mixture-of-Experts systems.
🎖 Honors and Awards
- 2024 Platinum Prize, Poster Track, Software Engineering for Machine Learning Applications (SEMLA)
- 2020 Outstanding Mentor, American Top Education Elite Plan, Harbour Education
- 2016 Shortlisted, Chunhui Cup Oversea Students Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition, Ministry of Education & Ministry of Science and Technology, China
- 2014 Excellent Graduate, Beijing Institute of Technology
- 2013 Meritorious Prize, Mathematical Contest in Modeling (MCM)
💬 Service
- Reviewer/PC, Mining Software Repositories (MSR 2026), Mining Challenge Track
- External Reviewer, International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE 2026), Industry Challenge Track
- Member, Institute for Ethical AI & Machine Learning
- Member, Datawhale, authoring and maintaining open-source educational materials on machine learning theory and practices
📖 Educations
- 2021 - (now), Ph.D. Candidate in Computer Science, Queen’s University, Canada. Supervisor: Dr. Ahmed E. Hassan (ACM/IEEE Fellow).
- 2014 - 2016, M.S.E. in Computer Graphics and Game Technology, University of Pennsylvania, USA. Supervisor: Dr. Stephane Lane.
- 2010 - 2014, B.Eng. in Information Countermeasure Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, China. Supervisor: Dr. Senlin Luo.
📐 Teaching
Queen’s University
- Teaching Assistant, CISC 322 Software Architecture, 2024
- Teaching Assistant, CISC 834 Topics in Computer Science: MLOps and Release Engineering, 2023
University of Pennsylvania
- Teaching Assistant, CIS 4210/5210 Artificial Intelligence, 2016
📊 Experience
- Feb 2025 - Present, Research Intern, Huawei Canada, Toronto, Canada. Supervisor: Dr. Gustavo Ansaldi Oliva.
- Jan 2021 - Jul 2021, Visiting Scholar, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China. Supervisor: Dr. Hui Liu.
- Jul 2019 - Dec 2020, Mentor, Harbour Education, Beijing, China.
- Dec 2018 - Jul 2019, Software Engineer, Method Studios, Santa Monica, USA.
- Sep 2017 - Jan 2018, Software Engineer, Visual Concepts, Simi Valley, USA.
- May 2016 - Dec 2016, Unity Developer, Imagination Vent, San Diego, USA.