Hey there! 👋 I’m a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Cognitive Science at Johns Hopkins University, advised by Professor Leyla Isik.

These days I’m working on (1) bridging human visual neuroscience and deep learning to build more robust, noise-resistant vision systems; and (2) understanding how our brains predict what we’ll see next and why human vision is so remarkably efficient.

Download full CV (PDF) ↗

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• May 2026 Excited to share that I will be presenting our work on the role of spatial frequency biases in neural networks’ robustness at VSS 2026 in St. Pete Beach, Florida.
• April 2026 Excited to share that I received the Best Poster Award at the Celebrating women in data science and AI symposium.
• January 2026 Joined Leyla’s lab @Johns Hopkins University as a postdoctoral researcher. Excited for this next chapter!
• Fall 2025 Excited to share that I have been awarded the Scott Dissertation Completion Fellowship from the Graduate College at UIUC.

• Best poster award at the Celebrating women in data science and AI symposium. (2026)
• Scott Dissertation Completion Fellowship, UIUC (2025 – 2026)
• FoVea Travel and Networking Award, Females of Vision, et al. (FoVea) (2025)
• Winner of the Bio-informed AI Research Competition, UIUC (2024)
• Elsevier/Vision Research International Travel Award, VSS 2023 (2023)
• Graduate College Conference Presentation Awards, UIUC (2023 – 2025)
• Illinois Distinguished Fellowship, UIUC (2020 – 2023)
• Dean’s List, UMN (2016 – 2020)
• Graduate with highest distinction, UMN (2020)
• Maroon Global Excellence Scholarship, UMN (2016 – 2020)

Published Articles

1. The Role of Real-world Statistical Regularities in Visual Perception

   D. M. Beck, E. Center, and Z. Shao, Current Directions in Psychological Science, 33(5), 317-324. (2024)

2. Is Attention Necessary for the Representational Advantage of Good Exemplars over Bad Exemplars?

   Z. Shao and D. M. Beck, European Journal of Neuroscience, 59(9), 2129-2415. (2024)

   • Code available

Preprints

1. Probing Human Visual Robustness with Neurally-Guided Deep Neural Networks

   Z. Shao, L. Ma, Y. Zhou, Y. J. Zhang, S. Koyejo, B. Li, and D. M. Beck, arxiv. (2025)

   • Code available

Conference Posters & Talks

1. Human Visual Robustness Emerges from Manifold Disentanglement in the Ventral Visual Stream

   Z. Shao, Y. Zhou, D. M. Beck (2025)
   Oral Presentation at Vision Science Society (VSS), St. Pete Beach, FL.

   • Talk recording here

2. Does Leveraging the Human Ventral Visual Stream Improve Neural Network Robustness

   Z. Shao, L. Ma, B. Li, D. M. Beck (2024)
   Oral Presentation at Vision Science Society (VSS), St. Pete Beach, FL.

   • Talk recording here

3. Increasing robustness of ventral visual cortex revealed by neurally-guided deep neural networks

   Z. Shao, Ma, L., Li, B., Beck, D. M. (2024)
   Poster presented at Society for Neuroscience (SfN), Chicago, IL.

   • Download poster here

4. Neural-guidance by the Human Ventral Visual Stream Improves Neural Network Robustness

   Z. Shao, L. Ma, B. Li, D. M. Beck (2024)
   Oral Presentation at Sandia National Laboratories Annual Machine Learning/Deep Learning (MLDL) Workshop, online

5. The similarity of CNN, behavioral, and PPA feature spaces

   P.-L. Yang, Z. Shao, and D. M. Beck (2023)
   Poster presented at Vision Science Society (VSS), St. Pete Beach, FL.

6. Is Attention Necessary for the Representational Advantage of Good Exemplars over Bad Exemplars?

   Z. Shao and D. M. Beck (2023)
   Poster presented at Vision Science Society (VSS), St. Pete Beach, FL.

   • Download poster here

7. Neural correlates of maltreatment timing during self-processing in depressed adolescents

   M. Castro, Z. Shao, M. Engstrom, J. Y. Teoh, and K. Quevedo (2019)
   Poster presented at Minnesota Supercomputing Institute (MSI) Research Exhibition, Minneapolis, MN.