About Me
I am a final year PhD student in the Bristol Interaction Group (BIG) at the University of Bristol, supervised by Dr Oussama Metatla and Professor Kirsten Cater. My PhD work focuses on accessible interaction for people with motor impairments, with a broader interest in responsible AI. I have also contributed to projects on cross-sensory interaction for older adults, AI safety and AI governance.
Before starting my PhD, I completed an MSc in Computer Science at the University of Bristol under the supervision of Professor Aisling OโKane. Prior to that, I received a BSc in Landscape Architecture from Sichuan Agricultural University.
I am currently seeking visiting research opportunities from Autumn 2026, as well as postdoctoral opportunities starting from 2027 onwards. Please feel free to get in touch.
News
- 2026.7: Started a visiting appointment with Dr Chongyang Wangโs team at West China Hospital.
- 2026.6: Reviewer for MobileHCI 2026 Poster
- 2026.6: AdaptaFace has been conditionally accepted to UIST 2026 ๐
- 2026.6: Reviewer for Ubicomp 2026 Poster
- 2026.5: External Reviewer for ASSETS 2026
- 2026.4: Reviewer for CSCW 2026 Poster
- 2026.2: Reviewer for DIS 2026
- 2026.1: Beyond Accuracy has been accepted to CHI 2026 ๐
- 2025.3: Our workshop paper has been accepted by CHI 2025 ๐
- 2023.3: Our workshop paper has been accepted by CHI 2023 ๐
Publications
Conference Proceedings
Beyond accuracy: Auditing allocative harms in facial-gesture recognition for people with motor impairments
Siyu Zhang, Yelu Gu, Kirsten Cater, and Oussama Metatla.
Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2026, pp. 1-24.
Poster & Workshop Papers
Enhancing the Accessibility and Robustness of Above-Neck Gesture Interfaces in Immersive Environments Using Adversarial Images
Siyu Zhang, Yelu Gu, Wenda Zhao, Kirsten Cater, and Oussama Metatla.
The Third Workshop on Building an Inclusive and Accessible Metaverse for All at CHI 2025, 2025.
Inferring Gestural Intent as a Model to Support Accessible Virtual Reality Interactions for People with Upper-Limbs Motor Impairments
Siyu Zhang, Kirsten Cater, and Oussama Metatla.
Workshop on Building an Inclusive and Accessible Metaverse for All at CHI 2023, 2023.
Ongoing Research
Welcome conversations and collaborations on these research directions.
- Governing AI Representation: Memory, simulation, and delegated identity in persistent AI systems.
- From Seeing to Sensing: LLM-based cross-sensory translation for accessible visual understanding.
- Chameleon: Programmable wearable surfaces for real-time visual privacy against machine vision.
Education
- 2022 - present, Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of Bristol, UK.
- 2017 - 2018, M.Sc. in Computer Science, University of Bristol, UK.
- 2011 - 2015, B.Sc. in Landscape Architecture, Sichuan Agricultural University, China.
Experience
- 2019 - 2022, Founder and Lead Developer, Chengdu Heimerdinger Technology Co., Ltd., China.
Led web and mini-program development for corporate and public-sector clients. - 2015, Assistant Interaction Designer, Lenovo Research, Chengdu, China.
Worked on Lenovo Mobile Store and ZUI.
Services
- Reviewer for Ubicomp, CSCW, DIS, MobileHCI and ASSETS.