Zhiyuan "Ryan" Wang

I am a fourth-year PhD candidate in Systems and Information Engineering at the University of Virginia (UVA), working with Prof. Laura E. Barnes in the Sensing Systems for Health Lab and the Link Lab. I obtained my Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Xiamen University, China, in 2021. Working with interdisciplinary partners from medicine, nursing, psychology, and bioethics, I develop AI-empowered ubiquitous sensing and intervention systems to enhance human health and well-being. I published in venues such as ACM IMWUT, CSCW, CHI, HEALTH, IEEE IoTJ, TMC, Science Health Data Science, Nature Health Systems, interned at Meta, Johnson & Johnson, and Baidu, and awarded honors such as 2024 NSF CPS Rising Star, UVA All-University Teaching Award, UVA SEAS Endowed Fellowship and Teaching Fellowship.

Keywords: Digital Health, Ubiquitous and Mobile Computing, Human-Cenetered Interactive Technology

   News

• Aug 2025- One co-authored paper on understanding privacy and security threats in Extended Reality (XR) has been accepted by NDSS 2026. 

• May 2025- We are organizing EvalComp workshop at ACM Ubicomp/ISWC 2025 concerning the evaluation and benchmarking challenges in ubiquitous sensing and computing, particularly in the era of LLMs and foundation models - consider to participate!

• May 2025- One paper on stakeholder engagement in LLM health systems was accepted by npj Health Systems [Link]

• May 2025- Joined Meta Reality Lab Research as a Multimodal Behavioral AI Research Scientist Intern!

• Apr 2025- Exciting news- I received All-University Graduate Teaching Award from University of Virginia!

• Dec 2024- One paper on LLM palliative care communication assessment was accepted by ACM HEALTH LLM Special Issue [Link].

• Sep 2024- Excited to announce that I’ve been awarded the UVA Sture G. Olsson Endowed Fellowship.

• Jun 2024- One paper understanding social contexts using ambient audio was accepted by ACII 2024. 

• Jun 2024- One paper on evaluating palliative care clinical communication using wearables and NLP was accepted by ACM CSCW [Arxiv].

• Apr 2024- I was selected for NSF Cyber-Physical System (CPS) Rising Stars 2024 [Web]!

• Mar 2024- This summer, will be working as a digital health research scientist intern at Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine.

• Mar 2024- One paper on enhancing HIV mHealth patient-provider communication with LLMs was accepted by ACM CHI LBW.

• Dec 2023- Secured $87K research funding for developing an LLM societal information chatbot as a student-PI.

• Aug. 2023- One paper on quantitative analysis of privacy risks in digital phenotyping was accepted by IEEE BSN [Online]

• Jul. 2023- One paper on detecting socially anxious individuals' social contexts was accepted by ACM IMWUT [Online]

• Apr. 2023- One paper on state anxiety detection using linguistic biomarkers was accepted by IEEE EMBC [Arxiv].

• Feb. 2023- Check out a smartwatch prototype we designed for better patient-provider communication featured on UVA Engineering, Today, and Nursing. 

• Oct. 2022- Honored to give a student presentation on personalized ML for digital mental health in NSF-NIH SCH PI meeting!

• Jul. 2022- Our paper on mobile sensing in COVID-19 was accepted by SPJ Health Data Science [Featured on AAAS, Medical Press, News Medical]. 

• Feb. 2022- Our paper on mobile sensing for personalized medicine and population health was accepted by IEEE IoTJ [online]. 

Awards

1. 2025 UVA All-University Graduate Teaching Award

2. 2024 UVA Engineering Sture G. Olsson Endowed Fellowship ($12K)

3. 2024 NSF Cyber-Physical System (CPS) Rising Star 

4. 2024 University of Virginia Engineering Teaching Fellowship (~$20K)

5. 2024 University of Virginia Ruthie Oxford Memorial Award

6. 2021 University of Virginia SIE Departmental Fellowship (1st year funding ~$55K)

7. 2020 Xiamen University Outstanding Undergrad Research Award and Funding (~$10K)

Media Coverage

1. A Cognitive Assistant on Your Doctor’s Smartwatch? | University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science, 2023

2. Watch Your Words: CommSense Prototype Records and Assesses Bedside Conversations | UVA Today 2023

3. A Review on Mobile Sensing in the COVID-19 Era | AAAS EurekAlert! 2022

4. Publishing COVID-19 Risk Prediction Model in 2020 Baidu World Conference | Xiamen University School of Information (In Chinese) 2020