Ellie Zhou

Ellie Zhou

Hi, I’m Ellie, a student at Westmont High School.

I’m an endlessly curious learner who loves exploring new ideas, tackling challenging problems, and understanding how things work. I’m passionate about research, especially in AI and computer vision, and find joy in teaching others, sharing knowledge, and giving back to my community. I love collaborating with people, exchanging perspectives, and bringing different ideas together.

Outside of STEM, I enjoy dancing and spending time with family and friends. Above all, I strive to lead with kindness and empathy, build meaningful connections, and make a positive difference in the lives of others.

Portrait of Ellie Zhou

Research

In my opinion, computer vision has the potential to truly shape the world because it gives machines the ability to perceive and understand the physical world. My research centers on using computer vision to uncover insights in healthcare, as well as making computer vision systems more trustworthy.

Poster panel titled Giving Human Segmentation Leads to Less Background Bias: diagrams of the Segmented, Dual Branch and Weighted-Focus architectures, a results table, and a bar chart showing reduced background bias with augmented training data

Seeing Beyond the Scene: Analyzing and Mitigating Background Bias in Action Recognition

  • Selected as one of four students nationwide for the Computer Science division of Princeton’s Laboratory Learning Program (<2% acceptance rate); conducted research in the Visual AI Lab under Prof. Olga Russakovsky and Jihoon Chung.
  • First-Author paper accepted to NeurIPS 2025 NextVid and SpaVLE workshops.
  • Won 1st place at the Synopsys Championship.
  • Conducted a systematic analysis of background bias across three families of AI models: action classification models, vision-language models (CLIP, SigLIP2), and large language models (InternVL3, GPT), training on 49,336 videos and evaluating across three benchmarks. After discovering that all of them rely on background as a shortcut, I built four novel architectures and an automated prompt-generation system that reduced background bias by 9.85%.

Read the paper See my poster

Poster panel titled Intelligence Branch: facial video passing through two feature-extraction stages, with 16-, 32- and 64-channel attention maps and a scale showing which face regions receive low and high attention

Developing a Non-Contact Cardiac Monitoring System via Remote Photoplethysmography (rPPG)

  • Won 2nd place at the Synopsys Championship.
  • As an independent research project, developed a real-time, low-cost, contactless AI model to monitor heart health, addressing a lack of insight into heart health among underserved and rural populations.
  • Predicted heart rate with a mean absolute error of 0.586 beats per minute on the UBFC-rPPG benchmark, and computed 8 cardiovascular metrics from ordinary webcam video.

See my poster

Personal Projects

Building technology is a way for me to help my community. Everything I build is centered around one question: how can I improve the lives of those around me? This has led me to build an in-page translator for friends learning English, a website to help my friend’s father’s small business reach more customers, and a gaze-tracking communication tool for my grandpa with ALS. In college and beyond, I hope to dedicate myself toward building intelligent human-centered systems that meaningfully improve people’s quality of life.

LinguaLens

  • An in-page reading aid for English learners: select any word or phrase to get an AI translation, a simple-English definition, an image, and pronunciation — without leaving the page you are reading.
  • Chrome MV3 extension, running on Gemini or Cerebras.

View on GitHub

The Alex's Plumbing and More homepage: a dark hero reading Bay Area Plumbing, Concrete and Fencing, with call and free-estimate buttons

Plumbing Website

  • A website for my friend’s dad, who runs a multi-trade business in the Bay Area — plumbing, concrete, and fencing.
  • Helped increase brand visibility and attract more customers.

Visit the site

The communication board on screen: a three-by-three grid of phrase tiles reading Yes, No, Thank you, I'm in pain, I need help, Water please, I need a break, and Keyboard, with one tile filling orange as the dwell timer runs, and a small webcam preview in the corner marking the tracked pupil

GazeTracker

  • A communication board you operate with your eyes: look at a tile, hold for about a second, and the computer speaks for you.
  • Built with Python and OpenCV, on top of an open-source eye tracker.

View on GitHub

Service & Leadership

Valley Water Youth Commission - Chair

After a year as Vice Chair, I was elected Chair of Valley Water’s 21-member Youth Commission, representing Santa Clara County’s 2M water consumers. I mentor 11 Youth Commissioners, coordinate quarterly meetings and youth-led proposals with agency executives aligned to district goals, and lead projects. I also produced four educational videos on water purification, featuring Valley Water’s Water Quality Laboratory and Advanced Water Purification Center.

Care Kit Project

With San Jose having one of the highest per capita youth homelessness rates, I led a group of Youth Commissioners to organize a care kit drive for youth facing homelessness. We raised more than $10,000 that funded care kits, and hand-delivered them to the Bill Wilson Center. Our project helped restore dignity to vulnerable youth across Santa Clara County.

  • Youth Commissioners around a long table, sorting socks, toothbrushes, razors and other supplies into kits
  • Five Youth Commissioners giving thumbs up behind tables covered with dozens of finished black drawstring kits
  • Donation flyer reading Care Kit Donations Needed, noting that Santa Clara County has the highest number of homeless teens in the Bay Area

River Cleanups

I hosted five river cleanups at Alviso Slough and Coyote Creek, removing more than 1,150 pounds of trash. I coordinated logistics, delivered pre-event briefings to 100 volunteers, including Valley Water leadership, and facilitated a trash data collection activity to identify the most common pollutants and discuss ways to reduce them at the source.

  • Ellie in a high-visibility vest holding a litter picker and a Valley Water bag beside a creek, with the salt ponds and hills behind
  • Around fifteen volunteers in high-visibility vests behind a Valley Water Youth Commission banner, with roughly twenty full blue bags of trash collected from the creek
  • Volunteers cheering with raised arms behind the Youth Commission banner beside the creek, next to a heap of filled blue bags

In the Media

  • The care kit drive, featured by Valley Water (@scvwd).
  • Coastal Cleanup Day 2025 with the Youth Commission, featured by Valley Water (@scvwd).

ParagonX Academy - President

Teaching and mentoring students is one of my greatest joys. For me, learning to code and build AI models was transformative because it made me feel like I could build anything. Through teaching USACO Bronze and Intro to Machine Learning classes at ParagonX for two years, I strive to help other students achieve that same agency and confidence. Now, as President, I drive our broader organizational vision — leading the executive team and more than 25 instructors, expanding our global outreach efforts to democratize education, and scaling our curriculum. Since I joined, ParagonX has taught more than 1,800 students across 24 countries.

  • The ParagonX Academy homepage, headlined Bringing STEM Education to Our Community
  • Teaching an Intro to Machine Learning class, on a slide contrasting regression and classification

Visit ParagonX Academy

Visual AI & Computer Vision Club - Founder

At programming competitions and hackathons, I always noticed that it seemed to be dominated by the same narrow demographic. My goal with this club is to help guide more students into AI, bringing more diverse voices into the field. As founder of Westmont’s first AI club, I teach computer vision lessons every other week and lead discussions of research papers on AI bias. I guide our members through literature review, model building, and experimentation as each trains their own image classifier, and I host games and competitions that show real-world applications of AI.

  • Nine club members gathered at the desks of a classroom after a session, smiling at the camera

Science Fair Club - Founder

Students at my school had immense scientific curiosity but were unsure how to conduct research. I founded Westmont’s first Science Fair Club to help them realize those aspirations. I ran outreach across campus, brought in more than fifty students, and recruited five mentors. I created a 20-page guide, lead weekly masterclasses, and mentor 25 student projects toward the Synopsys Championship.

  • Six students in the school library in front of a projected slide reading Complete the interest form, with a QR code linking to the science fair sign-up
    Our mentor team presenting at the kickoff meeting
  • Students seated at library tables listening as club members present a slide titled Why Participate?, listing reasons to do independent research
    Weekly research masterclasses

Wharton Investment Competition - Team Lead

Freshman year, I led a team of four girls with no prior investment experience to become one of the top 11 Global Finalists out of more than 1,600 teams. I developed the investment strategy for our client and designed an innovative trading algorithm. As team leader, I managed project milestones, fostered a collaborative and positive environment, and kept our team morale high throughout the seven-month competition.

  • The team holding certificates in front of a Wharton Global High School Investment Competition backdrop
  • Ellie presenting at a podium with two teammates beside her

Harker Programming Club - Officer

I wrote problems for the Harker Programming Invitational (more than 400 students) and the Girls Programming League (more than 160 students), led monthly coding lectures, and organized speaker events.

  • About twenty students wearing HPI Officer badges posing together as a group in a break room
    Our officer team at the Harker Programming Invitational

Harker Career Connect Club - Officer

I helped more than 250 students explore startups and careers. I organized more than ten speaker events with founders and professionals and eight company tours, coordinated trips to professional conferences, and led four career-skills workshops.

  • View from the audience at a tech conference, with a speaker on a purple-lit stage beside a slide reading What leaders need to know about AI
    A professional conference we attended
  • Students seated along a row of desks in a classroom, listening during a speaker event, with cupcakes and pasta in the foreground
    A founder speaker event

Writing & Photography

Writing short stories and photography are the ways that I unleash my creativity. My writing explores themes of familial relationships, often echoing my own experiences. In photography, I love being able to slow down and capture the little moments, as well as being creative through digital editing in Photoshop — check out my strawberry panda!

Short Stories

Photography

Dance & Artistic Swim

Dance and swimming give me immense joy. I perform jazz, hip-hop, and contemporary dance in school productions, spirit events, and Spanish Cultural Night. I love the adrenaline rush of performing on stage and in the water. Both have also taught me essential skills that have transferred to other areas of my life: teamwork, resilience, and the courage to always keep trying and growing.

Photo Gallery

  • Selfie of Ellie with fellow COSMOS students in matching blue COSMOS UCLA shirts on the UCLA campus
    COSMOS
  • Ellie smiling in an office chair at her desk in a Princeton lab, next to a laptop showing code
    Princeton LLP 2025
  • Ellie explaining her poster to a visitor at a NeurIPS 2025 workshop poster session
    Presenting at NeurIPS 2025
  • Ellie smiling beside her NeurIPS 2025 poster, Seeing Beyond the Scene
    Presenting at NeurIPS 2025
  • Ellie standing beside her background bias poster board at the 2026 Synopsys Championship
    Presenting at Synopsys Championship 2026
  • Ellie on a rooftop wearing a Startup School 2026 badge, with the San Francisco skyline and Bay Bridge behind her
    Y Combinator Startup School 2026
  • Ellie standing in front of a glowing orange Y Combinator Presents Startup School sign
    Y Combinator Startup School 2026

Awards

  • Y Combinator Startup School (2026) Selected among the top 1,500 of more than 30,000 applicants (under 5% acceptance). Received $25K in compute credits.
  • 1st Place, Synopsys Silicon Valley Science and Technology Championship (2026) Physical Science and Engineering category. Qualified to the California Science & Engineering Fair.
  • IEEE Technical Excellence Award (2026)
  • National Merit Semifinalist (2026) Less than 1% of U.S. high school seniors, based on the PSAT/NMSQT taken as a junior.
  • Honor Roll, USA North American AI Olympiad Round 1 (2026)
  • Campbell Union High School District Certificate of Recognition for STEM Excellence (2026) One of three students selected districtwide.
  • First-author paper on background bias accepted to two NeurIPS workshops (2025) What Makes a Good Video: Next Practices in Video Generation and Evaluation (NextVid); SPACE in Vision, Language, and Embodied AI (SpaVLE).
  • 2nd Place, Synopsys Silicon Valley Science and Technology Championship (2025) Physical Science and Engineering category.
  • USA Junior Mathematical Olympiad (USAJMO) Qualifier (2024) Qualified for the American Invitational Mathematics Examination twice, in 2023 and 2024, and for Math Prize for Girls in 2024.
  • Global Finalist, Wharton Global High School Investment Competition (2024) Team Leader. Top 11 of more than 1,600 teams from 62 countries — under 1%.
  • Gold, President’s Volunteer Service Award (2024) Teaching STEM at non-profit orgs; creek cleanups; sustainability.
  • Finalist, Principles of Business Management & Administration Roleplay and Testing, California DECA State Conference (2024) Top 8 out of 114 participants.
  • State Honor, MTAC Certificate of Merit Advanced Level (Level 10) Piano (2024)
  • USA Computing Olympiad (USACO) Gold (2023) Perfect score in Bronze; 933 out of 1000 in Silver.
  • Gold Key, Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, Short Story (2023)
  • Honorable Mention, Synopsys Silicon Valley Science and Technology Championship (2023) Environmental Engineering category. Qualified to the California Science & Engineering Fair.