**Tzu-Yun Ariel Shann**

I’m an Applied AI/ML Engineer with a background in machine learning research and software engineering. I enjoy turning messy, real-world problems into practical AI-powered systems, from designing ML and data pipelines to integrating APIs and cloud infrastructure and bringing solutions into production.
My experience spans startups, research labs, and customer-facing AI projects, and I’m particularly interested in using AI to automate and improve real-world workflows. I’m currently looking for opportunities to grow as an AI/ML Engineer and work on challenging problems where I can combine research-driven thinking with practical engineering.
If you have an interesting opportunity and think I might be a good fit, feel free to connect with me via Email or LinkedIn. You can also find my [latest CV](https://lasirenashann.github.io/doc/tzuyun-ariel-shann-resume-sep-2026.pdf) here.
Experience
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2025/9-Present
: *Delivery Engineer (Applied AI)* at *Virtual Science AI*
:
_UK (Remote)_
: - Built and maintained production data and AI pipelines for pharmaceutical clients, covering data ingestion, transformation, transcription, summarization, analytics, and downstream reporting.
: - Integrated client CRM and enterprise systems with internal AI/analytics platforms, including secure API-based integrations with Salesforce/Veeva environments.
: - Designed and implemented analytics and monitoring tools to track platform usage and engagement.
: - Worked directly with pharmaceutical clients to translate ambiguous business requirements into technical solutions.
: - Delivered 110+ client projects across advisory boards, medical affairs, and social listening.
2024/2-2024/4
: *Software Engineer* at *Phazemos*
:
_USA (Remote)_
: - Built Python-based automation and data-processing tools to streamline internal workflows and reduce manual operational work.
: - Developed custom Salesforce Apex workflows and business logic to automate sales operations and activity tracking.
: - Designed data pipelines integrating multiple internal and external data sources into client-facing analytics dashboards.
: - Led data preprocessing, analysis, and visualization initiatives used by leadership to inform business strategy.
: - Built workflow automations using Python, Make, Airtable, and ClickUp across internal operations.
2022/10-2023/2
: *AI Engineer* at *Onoma AI*
:
_Seoul, South Korea (Remote)_
: - Led development of computer vision components for an AI-driven webtoon generation platform.
: - Implemented generative and diffusion-based models to support automated visual content generation workflows.
: - Built and evaluated object detection pipelines to support asset generation and scene composition.
: - Worked with PyTorch and Hugging Face ecosystems to prototype and deploy experimental ML components.
2020/5-2020/11
: *Research Intern* at *Borealis AI*
:
_Toronto, ON, Canada (Remote)_
: - *Supervisor*: Ruitong Huang, Pablo Hernandez Leal
: - *Research topic*: exploration strategies for reinforcement learning
2017/1-2018/8
: *Research Assistant* at *National Tsing Hua University*
:
_Hsinchu, Taiwan_
: - *Supervisor*: [Chun-Yi Lee](http://cymaxwelllee.wixsite.com/elsa)
: - *Research topic*: reinforcement learning, multi-agent reinforcement learning
2016/7-2016/9
: *Software Engineer Intern* at *MediaTek*
:
_Hsinchu, Taiwan_
Education
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2018/9- 2022/4
: *MSc in Computer Science* at *University of British Columbia*
:
_Vancouver BC, Canada_
: - *Supervisor*: Leonid Sigal, Michiel van de Panne
: - *MSc Thesis*: [Reinforcement Learning in the Presence of Sensing Costs](https://open.library.ubc.ca/soa/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/24/items/1.0413129)
2014/9-2017/6
: *BSc in Computer Science* at *National Tsing Hua University*
:
_Hsinchu, Taiwan_
Publications
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+ *Adversarial Exploration Strategy for Self-Supervised Imitation Learning*
Zhang-Wei Hong, Tsu-Jui Fu, *Tzu-Yun Shann*, Yi-Hsiang Chang, Chun-Yi Lee.
In Proceedings of the _Conference of Robot Learning (*CoRL*)_, Oct. 2019 (_Oral presentation_)
Paper
+ *Diversity-Driven Exploration Strategy for Deep Reinforcement Learning*
Zhang-Wei Hong, *Tzu-Yun Shann*, Shih-Yang Su, Yi-Hsiang Chang, Tsu-Jui Fu, Chun-Yi Lee.
In Advances in _Neural Information Processing Systems (*NeurIPS*)_, Dec. 2018.
(A [shorter version](https://openreview.net/pdf?id=BJsD7L1vz) of this paper has been accepted in ICLR 2018 Workshop)
Paper
+ *A Deep Policy Inference Q-Network for Multi-Agent Systems*
*Tzu-Yun Shann*♮, Shih-Yang Su♮, Zhang-Wei Hong♮, Yi-Hsiang Chang, Chun-Yi Lee.
In Proceedings of the _International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (*AAMAS*)_, Jul. 2018.
(♮ indicates equal contribution)
Paper Code
+ *Virtual-to-Real: Learning to Control in Visual Semantic Segmentation*
Zhang-Wei Hong, Yu-Min Chen, Shih-Yang Su, *Tzu-Yun Shann*, Yi-Hsiang Chang, Hsuan-Kung Yang, Brian Hsi-Lin Ho, Chih-Chieh Tu, Yueh-Chuan Chang, Tsu-Ching Hsiao, Hsin-Wei Hsiao, Sih-Pin Lai, Chun-Yi Lee.
In Proceedings of the _International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (*IJCAI*)_, Jul. 2018.
Paper Video
Teaching
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Winter I, 2018
: Teaching assistant for [CPSC425 Computer Vision](https://www.cs.ubc.ca/~lsigal/teaching18_Term1.html)
Winter II, 2018
: Teaching assistant for [CPSC425 Computer Vision](https://www.cs.ubc.ca/~lsigal/teaching18_Term2.html)
Winter I, 2019
: Teaching assistant for CPSC322 Introduction to Artificial Intelligence
Dec 2019
: Teaching assistant for [IVADO/MILA/DSI Deep Learning School](https://ivado.ca/en/trainings/schools/ivado-mila-deep-learning-school-5th-edition-2/)
Winter II, 2019
: Teaching assistant for [CPSC425 Computer Vision](https://www.cs.ubc.ca/~lsigal/teaching19_Term2.html)
Winter II, 2020
: Teaching assistant for CPSC425 Computer Vision
Winter Term I, 2021
: Teaching assistant for CPSC330 Applied Machine Learning
Service
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Reviewing
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- *NeurIPS* 2019, 2020
- *ICML* 2020
Volunteering
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- *NeurIPS* 2018
- *ICLR* 2020
- *ICML* 2020
!!! note: Misc
- I was born and raised in *Taiwan*, a beautiful island in the Pacific.
- *Traveling* is something I enjoy very much. I’ve traveled across Asia, Europe, and North America, including Japan, Korea, Indonesia, the USA, the UK, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Canada, Sweden, and France.
- I’m a naturally curious person who loves exploring new things, learning from different cultures, and challenging myself.
- When it comes to human languages ;) I’m fluent in Mandarin and English, and I also speak a little German, Spanish, Japanese, and Korean (still learning!).