Danqing Zhang 张丹青 (AIML + Product + Software Development + Research)

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Email: danqing.zhang.personal AT gmail

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Welcome to my homepage!

All-rounded engineer + scientist. I can literally do anything for early AI startups: Agentic Systems, ML/DL/RL model training, full stack + infra, AI research

  • Agentic Systems (LiteMultiAgent and LiteWebAgent open source repos, ~200 stars)

  • DL/RL model training (since August 2017)

  • Full stack + infra: Since 2025, end-to-end solo building fullstack apps, frontend using NextJS deployed on Vercel, backend using NextJS and FastAPI deployed as AWS ECS services

  • AI research: 20+ AI/ML papers, 700+ citations, founded a non-profit AI research community and wrote 2 papers (one accepted to NAACL 2025, one in submission)

I'm a researcher, hacker, and builder based in San Francisco/Burlingame, currently in learning + exploration + building mode.

  • learning: embodied ai, vision language action models

  • building: full stack SaaS apps empowered by ai agents, search + RL with LLM-based agents

Before that, I was an MLE/researcher with six years of experience at Amazon and a PhD degree, specializing in NLP, LLM, information retrieval, and recommendation systems. In my last role, I was the LLM/NLP Tech Lead and Applied Science Manager at Amazon Ads. Before that, I worked as a Sr. Applied Research Scientist at Amazon Search (A9.com) on the QU team from 2018 to September 2022. I received my PhD degree in Systems Engineering (Cyber-physical Systems) from the University of California, Berkeley, College of Engineering in May 2018, under the supervision of Professor Alexei Pozdnoukhov. Before coming to Berkeley, I obtained my B.S. degree in Urban Science (Geographic Information Systems, GIS) and a secondary B.A. degree in Economics at Peking University in June 2014.

I am a quick learner who has successfully transitioned across various domains, primarily independently, from GIS & Economics to Smart Cities Research (focusing on spatial-temporal analysis and agent-based simulation), and then to NLP, Search/Ads, and Large Language Models (LLMs). My adaptability and motivation to iterate on ideas and efficiently execute tasks have been proven throughout my graduate studies and career.

I have co-authored over 10 papers presented at top AI conferences, accumulating over 700 citations by February 2025 (My Google Scholar). Furthermore, I have deployed five deep learning models from start to finish within Amazon's production system. I also hold one granted US patent.

PathOnAI.org - Open Source AI Research Community

I'm proud to be building an open source + AGI research online community: PathOnAI.org (join our Discord).

Since launching in August 2024, our community has:

  • Built three open source repositories
  • Published a paper accepted by a top AI conference
  • Prepared upcoming papers for ECML-PKDD and CIKM

I'm new to community building and welcome all feedback. If you'd like to learn more about the community, please message me directly. If you have friends or collaborators interested in AI research and open source, please invite them to join our server!

Expertise Experience
large language model (LLM) 2021/10 - Present
online algorithms, bandit algorithms 2021/05 - Present
natural language processing, information extraction, text classification 2018 – Present
deep learning 2017 - Present
social network analysis, graph mining 2014 – Present
urban informatics, smart cities 2014 - 2019
data science, data analytics 2013 - Present
location-based service (LBS), geodatabase, geoanalysis, remote sensing 2013 - 2014
budget pacing, budget optimization 2023/06 - 2024/03
bidding: autobidding, bid optimization 2023/06 - 2024/03
mechanism design & measurement 2023/06 - 2024/03
auction allocation, pricing 2023/06 - 2024/03

News

  • 05/06/2025 - Presented the LiteWebAgent at the NAACL 2025: https://www.pathonai.org/projects/litewebagent

  • 05/05/2025 - Released the Visual Tree Search Project: https://www.pathonai.org/projects/visualtreesearch

  • 04/29/2025 - Tutorial at WebConf 2025: Landing Generative AI in Industrial Social and E-commerce RecSys.

  • 04/28/2025 - Released Open Source Repo: visual tree search.

  • 03/26/2025 - Invited to serve as Program Committee for CIKM Short Paper Track.

  • 03/21/2025 - Released Open Source Repo: unofficial starter code for game arena roblox games.

  • 03/17/2025 - Invited to serve as Program Committee for CIKM Long Paper Track.

  • 03/06/2025 - The 'LiteWebAgent: The Open-Source Suite for VLM-Based Web-Agent Applications' paper is now available on arXiv.

  • 03/06/2025 - Invited to serve as Reviewer for NeurIPS 2025 (https://neurips.cc/).

  • 03/02/2025 - Invited to serve as Reviewer for SIGIR eCom'25 (https://sigir-ecom.github.io/).

  • 02/28/2025 - "LiteWebAgent: The Open-Source Suite for VLM-Based Web-Agent Applications" was accepted by 2025 Annual Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics -- System Demonstration Track (NAACL 2025).

  • 02/10/2025 - Invited to serve as Reviewer for COLM 2025, Conference on Language Modeling (https://colmweb.org/).

  • 01/20/2025 - Exited from my first startup. Solo-built production-ready AI agent backend, contributed to full stack development/ infrastructure setup. As the CTO & co-founder, I recruited all early hires for the company before I left. The company raised $xxxK in funding.

2024

  • 12/11/2024 - Invited to serve as reviewer for ICML 2025.

  • 12/05/2024 - "Tutorial on Landing Generative AI in Industrial Social and E-commerce Recsys" was accepted by WWW 2025.

  • 12/03/2024 - zzfoo integrated AWM (Agent Workflow Memory) into the LiteWebAgent framework.

  • 11/27/2024 - Released Open Source Repo: EB1 scripts.

  • 11/14/2024 - Released Open Source Repo: NaturalLanguageTerminal with Balaji.

  • 10/20/2024 - CIKM tutorial: Landing Generative AI in Industrial Social and E-commerce Recsys is available online.

  • 10/01/2024 - Integrate LiteWebAgent into LiteMultiAgent repo to enable hierarchical multi-agent framework with web browsing capacities.

  • 09/30/2024 - Invited to serve as reviewer for AISTATS 2025.

  • 09/19/2024 - We reimplemented the paper "Tree Search for Language Model Agents" in the LiteWebAgent framework. Now, the search agent is capable of exploring different trajectories for accomplishing web browsing tasks and returning the most promising one. This is useful for finding the optimal path to complete complex web browsing tasks in an offline manner: LiteWebAgent

  • 08/22/2024 - Pypi release for Released Open Source Repo: LiteMultiAgent

  • 08/21/2024 - Pypi release for Open Source Repo: LiteWebAgent

  • 08/17/2024 - Invited to serve as Program Committee member for Search and retrieval-augmented AI track WWW 2025.

  • 08/16/2024 - Invited to serve as reviewer for ICLR 2025.

  • 07/31/2024 - Released Open Source Repo: LiteWebAgent

  • 08/02/2024 - Invited to serve as Program Committee for AAAI 2025.

  • 07/31/2024 - Released Open Source Repo: LiteMultiAgent

  • 07/28/2024 - San Francisco Marathon 5k

  • 07/09/2024 - Invited to serve as Reviewer for ARR 2024 - June (EMNLP 2024).

  • 07/05/2024 - Tutorial "Landing Generative AI in Industrial Social and E-commerce Recsys" was accepted by CIKM 2024.

  • 07/01/2024 - Paper "Survey for Tutorial on Landing GAI in Social and E-commerce Recsys – the Industry Perspectives" was accepted by KDD GenAIRecP 2024.

  • 06/21/2024 - Accepted by Menlo Ventures as Fellow.

  • 06/16/2024 - Invited to serve as Reviewer for ARR 2024 - June (EMNLP 2024)

  • 06/11/2024 - Invited to serve as Reviewer for AAAI 2025.

  • 06/10/2024 - New survey: "Survey for Tutorial on Landing GAI in Social and E-commerce Recsys – the Industry Perspectives" is on arXiv.

  • 05/28/2024 - Accepted by Fusion Fund as Venture Fellow.

  • 05/22/2024 - Joined South Park Commons as member. Started my full time exploration on AI agents.

  • 05/13/2024 - Invited to serve as Reviewer for NLPCC 2024.

  • 05/06/2024 - Invited to serve as Reviewer for NeurIPS 2024.

  • 05/03/2024 - Accepted by South Park Commons as member.

  • 03/31/2024 - Invited to serve as Program Committee for CIKM 2024, Short Paper track.

  • 03/17/2024 - Oakland Running Festival 5K

  • 03/11/2024 - Invited to serve as Program Committee for CIKM 2024, Full Research Paper track.

  • 03/05/2024 - Admitted to On Deck Founders Fellowship.

  • 02/23/2024 - Invited to review for International Journal of Computational Intelligence Systems.

  • 02/14/2024 - Invited to serve as Program Committee for IEEE BigData 2024 .

  • 02/07/2024 - Invited to review for Transportation Research Part E.

  • 02/05/2024 - Invited to serve as Reviewer for first Conference on Language Modeling (https://colmweb.org/).


2023

  • 12/05/2023 - Invited to serve as Program Committee for ICML 2024.

  • 11/20/2023 - Invited to serve as Reviewer for EACL' 2024, The 18th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics.

  • 10/20/2023 - Selected as organizing committee member for Amazon Ads LLM Hackathon.

  • 10/16/2023 - One paper was accepted by ICDE 2024.

  • 09/01/2023 - Invited to serve as Reviewer for the Search track of The Web Conference 2024.

  • 08/26/2023 - Invited to serve as Reviewer for International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2024).

  • 07/18/2023 - Invited to serve as Technical Reviewer for Science Publications (SciPub) at Amazon.

  • 07/13/2023 - Invited to serve as Program Committee for AAAI 2024.

  • 06/30/2023 - Workshop proposal, Brand Understanding and Brand Shopping 2023, has been accepted as a part of AMLC (Amazon Machine Learning Conference) 2023.

  • 06/29/2023 - Invited to serve as Reviewer for ARR 2023 - June (EMNLP 2023).

  • 06/10/2023 - Invited to serve as Program Committee for CIKM 2023, Short Paper track.

  • 05/21/2023 - Invited to serve as Program Committee for CIKM 2023, Long Paper track.

  • 05/16/2023 - One paper was accepted by KDD 2023 (applied data science paper).

  • 04/23/2023 - Invited to serve as Program Committee member for SIGIReCom'23 (The 2023 SIGIR Workshop On eCommerce).

  • 03/27/2023 - Invited to serve as Reviewer for NeurIPS 2023.

  • 03/25/2023 - Thanks to the assistance of my husband and ChatGPT, I have successfully rebuilt my website, including my tech blog which is now accessible online again.

  • 03/24/2023 - Invited to serve as Reviewer for ARR 2023 - February (ACL 2023).

  • 03/22/2023 - Invited to serve as Reviewer for ARR 2023 - February (ACL 2023).

  • 02/28/2023 - Invited to serve as Program Committee member for ECML/PKDD 2023.

  • 02/21/2023 - Invited to serve as Program Committee member for TheWebConf2023-Companion.

  • 02/19/2023 - Invited to review for Transportation Research Part A.

  • 02/02/2023 - Invited to review for International Journal of Computational Intelligence Systems.


2022

  • 12/23/2022 - Invited to serve as Reviewer for ICML 2023.

  • 11/24/2022 - One paper was accepted by LOG (Learning on Graphs Conference) 2022 (research long paper).

  • 10/03/2022 - Joined Amazon Ads Brand Understanding Team as Senior Applied Scientist.

  • 07/31/2022 - Invited to serve as Program Committee member for AAAI 2023.

  • 07/18/2022 - Invited to serve as Program Committee member for CIKM 2022.

  • 07/17/2022 - Invited to serve as Reviewer for ARR 2022 - July (EMNLP 2022).

  • 05/18/2022 - One paper was accepted by KDD 2022 (research long paper).

  • 04/07/2022 - One paper was accepted by NAACL 2022, findings (research long paper).

  • 03/30/2022 - Invited to serve as Reviewer for NeurIPS 2022.

  • 03/15/2022 - Invited to serve as Program Committee member for ECML/PKDD 2022.

  • 02/22/2022 - One US patent granted.

  • 02/17/2022 - Invited to serve as Reviewer for ARR 2022 - February (NAACL 2022).

  • 01/23/2022 - Invited to review for INFORMS Journal on Computing.

  • 01/18/2022 - One paper was accepted by WWW 2022 (research long paper).

  • 01/17/2022 - Invited to serve as Reviewer for ARR 2022 - January (NAACL 2022).

  • 01/09/2022 - Invited to serve as Program Committee member for WSDM'22 Workshop: Decision Making for Modern Information Retrieval System.


2021

  • 12/26/2021 - Invited to serve as Reviewer for ARR 2021 - September (ACL 2022).

  • 11/27/2021 - Invited to review for International Journal of Information Technology & Decision Making.

  • 11/12/2021 - Started organizing A9 ML Research Talk.

  • 10/10/2021 - Promoted to Senior Applied Scientist.

  • 09/08/2021 - Invited to review for International Journal of Computational Intelligence Systems.

  • 08/25/2021 - One paper was accepted by EMNLP 2021 (research long paper).

  • 08/09/2021 - One paper was accepted by CIKM 2021 (Applied Research Track).

  • 07/24/2021 - Invited to review for ICLR 2022.

  • 07/03/2021 - Served as subreviewer for CIKM 2021.

  • 06/21/2021 - Invited to review for International Transactions on Electrical Energy Systems.

  • 06/11/2021 - Invited to serve as Reviewer for NLPCC 2021.

  • 05/26/2021 - Invited to serve as Program Committee member for SIGIReCom'21.

  • 05/07/2021 - Started my substack, but later switched back to using GitHub pages.

  • 05/05/2021 - One paper was accepted by ACL-IJCNLP 2021 (research long paper).

  • 04/05/2021 - Invited to review for Transportation Research Part C.

  • 03/24/2021 - Invited to serve as Program Committee member for ECML/PKDD 2021.

  • 03/10/2021 - One paper was accepted by NAACL-HLT 2021 (research long paper).

  • 01/25/2021 - Started actively maintaining my personal website.


2020

  • 10/20/2020 - I started anonymously blogging about my experiences working in data science and my Ph.D. journey on a social media platform. Although I discontinued my blogging in late 2021, I have managed to accumulate almost 1k followers.

  • 07/30/2020 - Paper selected as best paper for SIGIR eCom'20.

  • 04/02/2020 - Started running my twitter account for research on NLP and cyber physical systems.


2019

  • 10/13/2019 - Promoted to Applied Scientist II.

  • 09/24/2019 - One paper was accepted by Transportation Research Part E.

  • 07/28/2019 - San Francisco Marathon First Half Marathon. Total run: 2:18:38, Ranking: 1084/ 2817 (Female)


2018

  • 12/23/2018 - One paper was accepted by Transportation Research Part C.

  • 08/27/2018 - Joined Amazon Search Query Understanding Team as Applied Scientist I.

  • 06/08/2018 - One paper was accepted by Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD) Mining and Learning with Graphs (MLG) Workshop.

  • 05/15/2018 - Graduated from University of California Berkeley with a Ph.D. in Systems Engineering.

  • 05/02/2018 - Started running my personal blog while I was reading Lilian Weng's tech blog. But my personal blog was not maintained and was discontinued until the year 2023.


2017

  • 12/04/2017 - Passed PhD Qualify Exam.

  • 06/20/2017 - Started a summer internship at Amazon.


2016

  • 11/08/2016 - Passed PhD Prelim Exam.


My chinese name 丹青 has its special meaning. On its wikipedia page: In Chinese painting, danqing (Chinese: 丹青; pinyin: dān qīng) refers to paintings on silk and Xuan paper. Danqing is painted with an ink brush, color ink, or Chinese pigments using natural plant, mineral, and both metal pigments and pigment blends. Danqing literally means "red and blue-green" in Chinese, or more academically, "vermillion and cyan"; they are two of the most used colors in ancient Chinese painting.