Undergraduate Student
Department of Systems Design Engineering, Faculty of Engineering
University of Waterloo
Anna Zhou is a Systems Design Engineering student at the University of Waterloo with experience across artificial intelligence research, systems engineering, IT infrastructure, and project management. Anna is currently working on the Retreating from Risk project, where she is building an LLM-assisted retrieval-augmented generation pipeline to help decision-makers explore managed retreat case studies through grounded, source-cited responses. Her work combines Python, RAG pipelines, prompt engineering, embeddings, and user-guided questionnaire design.
Through past co-op roles across sports media technology, financial software, government defence, food manufacturing, and renewable energy, Anna has built automation systems, supported cloud and identity infrastructure, worked with databases and enterprise tools, managed technical projects, created CAD drawings for solar installations, and conducted civil and structural site visits. These experiences have shaped Anna's interest in designing practical, human-centered systems that make complex information easier to use.