Resume

Ziyuan Yao

Address: Available on Request

Email: yaoziyuan@gmail.com

Home Page: https://sites.google.com/site/yaoziyuan/

Education

    • Sept 2003: Enrolled in the computer science undergraduate program at Fudan University, Shanghai, China.

Work Experience

  • Apr 2012 - Present: Started the Phonetically Intuitive English (PIE) Project, a free Chrome browser extension that adds diacritics to English words to show pronunciation, for English-as-a-second-language (ESL) learners to learn pronunciation and children in English-speaking countries to learn to read.
  • Dec 2011: Suggested to Gmail that its "Loading..." progress bar can be shown at the center of the page instead of the upper left corner[2]. Suggestion implemented and took effect on Mar 8, 2012.
  • Feb 2010: Google showed interest in my research and initially asked me to work there, but later indicated that I needed further efforts to consolidate my work.[8]
  • Feb 2001 - Present: Developed and selling two text-to-speech shareware programs for Windows at ByteCool Software[1].

Research Experience

    • Sept 2003 - Sept 2009: Full-time research in novel approaches to major natural language problems (computer-assisted language learning, second language reading and writing aids and machine translation) and other problems. Major research achievements include "L1-driven L2 teaching", "Phonetically Intuitive English", "input-driven ontology aid" and other ideas presented in the free ebook[3] mentioned below.

Publications

  • Mar 2012: Second major release of Breaking the Language Barrier: A Game-Changing Approach[3] (version 0.18), a free ebook presenting emerging ideas and implementations in computer-assisted language learning, second language reading and writing aids and machine translation. 1 citation[4] as of Mar 2012.
  • Oct 2011: Phonetically Intuitive English 2.0, a scheme that adds Unicode-based diacritical marks on English words to show pronunciation without respelling, designed to be as easy to learn as possible. See "Phonetically Intuitive English" in the abovementioned free ebook[3] for details.
  • Apr 2010: Breaking the Language Barrier: A Game-Changing Approach[3] (version 0.09), a free ebook presenting emerging ideas and implementations in computer-assisted language learning, second language reading and writing aids and machine translation.

Awards and Media Coverage

  • June 2012: My project Phonetically Intuitive English (PIE) was reported by PCWorld[9] and other news media outlets[11].
  • Aug 2002: I won the 21st place in China's NOI (National Olympiad in Informatics) 2002 held in Tianjin.[7]
  • Feb 2002: MSN selected my shareware program CoolSpeech as "Featured Download" on Feb 19, 2002.[5]
  • Nov 2001: CoolSpeech won SmartComputing magazine's "November 2001 Smart Choice Award".[6]
  • Jun 2001: ZDNet picked CoolSpeech as the "Hot File of the Day" on June 6, 2001.[5]
  • Mar 2000: I won the 33rd place in China's NOI 2000 held in Macau.

References

  1. ByteCool Software: http://www.bytecool.com
  2. Suggestion to Gmail: https://plus.google.com/103097764320602190090/posts/2r2Hww9eHjB
  3. "Breaking the Language Barrier: A Game-Changing Approach": https://sites.google.com/site/yaoziyuan/publications/books/breaking-the-language-barrier-a-game-changing-approach
  4. Citations to "Breaking the Language Barrier: A Game-Changing Approach": http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=%22breaking+the+language+barrier%3A+a+game-changing+approach%22&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=on
  5. Awards won by CoolSpeech: http://www.bytecool.com/awards.htm
  6. CoolSpeech won SmartComputing magazine's "November 2001 Smart Choice Award": http://www.smartcomputing.com/editorial/article.asp?article=articles/2001/s1211/04s11/04s11.asp&searchtype=0&WordList=coolspeech
  7. NOI 2002 final rankings (in Chinese): http://noi.cn/noi-news/huojiang/121-noi2002
  8. For details, contact Peter Norvig, Director of Research at Google.
  9. PCWorld story on PIE Transformer: http://www.pcworld.com/article/256680/pie_a_chrome_extension_that_can_help_with_reading_and_pronunciation.html
    1. PIE Transformer's official website: https://sites.google.com/site/phoneticallyintuitiveenglish/
    2. A list of news media outlets that have reported PIE: https://sites.google.com/site/phoneticallyintuitiveenglish/useful-resources/pie-in-the-news