Hi, I am Xinyu Shi, a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate at University of Waterloo in Canada. I am lucky to be advised by Prof. Jian Zhao in WVisdom Research Group, affiliated with the WaterlooHCI Lab. During my PhD, I have interned at Adobe Research (twice) and Microsoft Research Asia.

I am a researcher in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Human-Centered AI. I endeavor to answer the question of how we can exploit the machine intelligence to augment human creativity in creative problem solving, with a primary focus on visual media authoring. To achieve this, I design, develop, and evaluate meaningful and useful interactive visual abstractions, serving as a mediator between users and machine, to enable powerful ways of thinking, visual intent communication, and visual media authoring.

Outside of research, I am keen on exploring new possibilities in my life. I love skiing, playing badminton, rock climbing (only belay, no bouldering), and travelling. I have two cats, they are so sweet!