Viana Nijia Zhang

With an interdisciplinary education background, my PhD research focused on exploring the potential of Conversational User Interfaces such as chatbots, in supporting the emotional wellbeing of working parents in the United Kingdom. Currently I am a research associate working on the EPSRC AGENCY project (2022 to 2025) that investigates the complex online harms and explores the design of appropriate harm-reducing and privacy-enhancing technologies that address unmet user needs within the UK population.

My research interest involves HCI (Human Computer Interaction), LLM (Large Language Model)-related design and training implications, mental health-related research in the field of Digital Health and Digital Education.

I was a PhD student in Computer Science at Open Lab, School of Computing, Newcastle University between Jan 2020 and Jan 2024. I completed my MSc in Computer Science and Bioinformatics at Newcastle University in 2018 and 2019. Before joining the School of Computing, I was trained in translating & interpreting (Chinese and English) at the School of Modern Languages at Newcastle University from 2016 to 2017.

During my study, I served as a research assistant of NUCoRE, Newcastle Business School and IDEA-FAST Project, contributing to digital health and digital education related projects. I also contributed to the teaching and supervision of several courses in the School of Computing since 2020.