CV

Education

• Ph.D in Bioengineering, University of Auckland, New Zealand, 2026 (expected)
• M.S. in Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University, China, 2018
• B.S. in Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University, China, 2015

Work experience

• 2024.07 - 2025.02: Research Assistant
  • Auckland Bioengineering Institute, University of Auckland
  • Duties includes: Research project management and software development
• 2019.10 - 2021.07: Technical Manager
  • Cyber Reality Innovation Centre (Startup Company)
  • Duties included: Managing a 7 people R&D team
• 2018.05 - 2019.07: Software Development Assistant
  • Southwest China Research Institute of Electronic Equipment
  • Duties included: Assisting software engineerings with development
• 2017.10 - 2018.01: Intern
  • University of South Australia
  • Duties included: Developing a collaborative VR system for sharing biosignals
• 2017.07 - 2017.09: Intern
  • Envision Energy
  • Duties included: Developing a VR-based system for interactive wind turbine product visualization

Publications

Hold the line: Restoring artistic expression in VR for people with Parkinson’s

Zou, Qianyuan, Chang, Zhuang, Zezheng Guan, Zirui Xiao, Huidong Bai, Mark Billinghurst, Xueliang Li, and Seungwoo Je. Hold the line: Restoring artistic expression in VR for people with Parkinson’s. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 215 (2026): 103862. DOI: 10.1016/j.ijhcs.2026.103862

Postures and Locomotion in Mixed Reality Agents: Effects on Social Perception of Virtual Opponents and Assistants

Chang, Zhuang, Kunal Gupta, Jiashuo Cao, Huidong Bai, and Mark Billinghurst. Exploring the Effects of Mixed Reality Agents’ Locomotion and Postures on Social Perception Through a Board Game. International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction (2025): 1-30. DOI: 10.1080/10447318.2025.2583473

Exploring the Effects of Mixed Reality Agents’ Locomotion and Postures on Social Perception Through a Board Game

Chang, Zhuang, Jiashuo Cao, Kunal Gupta, Huidong Bai, and Mark Billinghurst. Exploring the Effects of Mixed Reality Agents’ Locomotion and Postures on Social Perception Through a Board Game. International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction (2024): 1-19. DOI: 10.1080/10447318.2024.2435694

The Effect of Interface Types and Immersive Environments on Drawing Accuracy and User Comfort

Zou, Qianyuan, Huidong Bai, Chang, Zhuang, Zirui Xiao, Suizi Tian, Henry Been-Lirn Duh, Allan Fowler, and Mark Billinghurst. The Effect of Interface Types and Immersive Environments on Drawing Accuracy and User Comfort. In 2024 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR), pp. 836-845. IEEE, 2024. DOI: 10.1109/ISMAR62088.2024.00099

Perceived Empathy in Mixed Reality: Assessing the Impact of Empathic Agents’ Awareness of User Physiological States

Chang, Zhuang, Kangsoo Kim, Kunal Gupta, Jamila Abouelenin, Zirui Xiao, Boyang Gu, Huidong Bai, and Mark Billinghurst. Perceived Empathy in Mixed Reality: Assessing the Impact of Empathic Agents’ Awareness of User Physiological States. In 2024 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR), pp. 406-415. IEEE, 2024. DOI: 10.1109/ISMAR62088.2024.00055

EMiRAs-Empathic Mixed Reality Agents

Chang, Zhuang, Yun Suen Pai, Jiashuo Cao, Kunal Gupta, and Mark Billinghurst. EMiRAs-Empathic Mixed Reality Agents. In Proceedings of the 3rd Empathy-Centric Design Workshop: Scrutinizing Empathy Beyond the Individual, pp. 1-7. 2024. DOI: 10.1145/3661790.3661791

The impact of virtual agents’ multimodal communication on brain activity and cognitive load in virtual reality

Chang, Zhuang, Huidong Bai, Li Zhang, Kunal Gupta, Weiping He, and Mark Billinghurst. The impact of virtual agents’ multimodal communication on brain activity and cognitive load in virtual reality. Frontiers in Virtual Reality 3 (2022): 995090. DOI: 10.3389/frvir.2022.995090.

Project experience

Pre-Scripted Virtual Agents in VR for Traumatic Brain Injury Rehabilitation

LLM-based Conversational Virtual Agents in VR for Traumatic Brain Injury Rehabilitation

Empathic Touch for Mixed Reality Agents

Emotion-Aware Robot Arm

ERP Study on Virtual Agent Facial Anthropomorphism: Effects on Social Presence and Brain Activity

Skills

• HCI Design
  • AR/VR/MR interaction design
  • User study design
• Software development
  • Unity3D/C#
  • C++
  • Python
  • R
• IDE Tools
  • VScode
  • Visual Studio
  • Android Stuio
• Design Tools
  • Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Premiere
  • Figma, Miro