# Zhuoran (Elara) Liu | Academic Portfolio (https://elaraliu.com) This is the academic portfolio of **Elara Liu** (She / Her), currently Ph.D. student in Computer Science and Informatics @ Emory University at Emory University. The site is built with EnjuFolio (Next.js-based) developed by [ZL Asica](https://github.com/ZL-Asica). It organizes work into research projects, technical systems, and a CV. ## Static pages - [Home](https://elaraliu.com/): Landing page for Elara's Portfolio with overview, highlight news, and navigation to research and projects. High-level introduction and current status. - [Research](https://elaraliu.com/research): Selected research projects for Elara Liu, with methods, publications, roles, and venues. - [Projects](https://elaraliu.com/projects): Technical and infrastructure projects relevant to Elara Liu's research practice. - [CV](https://elaraliu.com/cv): Authoritative record of Elara Liu's publications, positions, experiences, and timelines (via embedded PDF). ## Research - [Designing With Caregivers: Power, Involvement, and Relations in Health-Related HCI](https://elaraliu.com/research/caregivers-hci-systematic-review): This project is in progress and aims to submit to CHI 2027. It exploring the dynamics of power, involvement, and relationships in health-related Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) design processes involving caregivers. (2025-10, — CHI 2027) - [Coach-Style LLM Assistant for Safe Lab Automation on the Jubilee Platform](https://elaraliu.com/research/jubilee-llm): I am developing a coach-style LLM assistant that turns wet-lab researchers’ plain-English goals into safe Jubilee automation code. By bridging verified APIs with documentation-grounded logic, the system runs dry-run simulations and safety checks before execution, supporting a mixed-initiative workflow that balances automation with human oversight. (2025-05, — CHI 2027) - [Smartwatch IMU foundation model for human activity recognition](https://elaraliu.com/research/llm-imu-har): I am co-developing a smartwatch IMU foundation model that aggregates and harmonizes multiple datasets, then pretrains self-supervised sequence models and tests them under leave-one-dataset and unseen-device protocols, aiming for a generalizable, well-documented model and recipe that transfers across devices, populations, and everyday conditions. (2025-05, — ICML 2026) - [Regional Experience Differences (Under Review)](https://elaraliu.com/research/human-ai-tool-account-difference): Under review at UIST 2026. (2025-04, — UIST 2026) - [Cultural Underpinnings of Stress Relief: Exploring Cross-Cultural Coping Strategies](https://elaraliu.com/research/cross-cultural-stress-copings): I co-led a mixed-methods study of culturally diverse college students that links how they cope with stress to cultural upbringing and personality, combining surveys and text analysis to show when “Eastern vs. Western” narratives hold and when convenience and hybrid practices better explain real-world coping. (2025-03) - [Mapping the Role of Wearable and mHealth Technologies in Stress: A Scoping Review](https://elaraliu.com/research/mhealth-scoping-review): I conducted a PRISMA-ScR scoping review of 42 studies using wearables, mHealth apps, and telemedicine for stress, mapping sensors, biomarkers, and scales to show where the field converges (HRV-focused pilots) and where evidence is thin (hormones, telemedicine, diverse populations) for future interventions. (2024-09) - [Explainable AI–Driven Integration of Health and Sleep Metrics for Enhanced Cardiovascular Risk Prediction](https://elaraliu.com/research/xai-cvd-sleep-data): I led an honors thesis that builds an interpretable ML model combining standard cardiovascular risk factors with sleep quality, duration, and efficiency, using regularized logistic regression and SHAP explanations to show how sleep shapes predicted risk and improves identification of high-risk individuals. (2023-12, — ICS Honor Program (UCI)) ## Technical Projects - [Airtable TS](https://elaraliu.com/projects/airtable-ts): I built Airtable TS as a tiny, fetch-based JS/TS client to replace Airtable’s unmaintained, Node-only SDK (which still relies on deprecated APIs like url.parse). It adds a type-safe façade, optional caching, and well-tested, signed releases so Airtable-backed research and data workflows are easier to write, safer to deploy, and reproducible over time. (2025-11) - [Gravatar Worker](https://elaraliu.com/projects/gravatar-worker): I built Gravatar Worker as a fast, cache-friendly Gravatar proxy on Cloudflare Workers to replace the official service’s slow origins, PNG-only avatars, hash-only API, and blocking in regions like mainland China. It lets developers self-host a gravatar-compatible endpoint that accepts raw emails, serves modern formats like AVIF/WebP, and uses edge caching to keep profile images responsive and under their control. (2025-05) - [SafePassage](https://elaraliu.com/projects/safepassage): I led a cross-functional team to build SafePassage, a web app that lets travelers with medical conditions generate a QR code linking to a localized, read-only medical profile. When scanned, the code shows emergency-relevant information in the local language and triggers SMS alerts to chosen contacts via a serverless backend, giving clinicians enough context to act while preserving the traveler’s privacy and control. (2025-02) - [@zl-asica/react](https://elaraliu.com/projects/zl-react): I created and maintain a small TypeScript-first library of React hooks and utilities that cleanly separates server-safe utilities from browser-only hooks, generates docs directly from types, and ships signed multi-runtime builds via JSR so teams get predictable behavior and clear server–client mental models. (2024-11) - [SuzuBlog](https://elaraliu.com/projects/suzu-blog): I designed and maintain SuzuBlog, a Next.js–based blog system that favors file-based authorship, a single config file, and static-by-default delivery so personal and academic sites stay fast, accessible, and easy to manage while still supporting i18n, comments, analytics, and llms.txt. (2024-10) - [Goshsha](https://elaraliu.com/projects/goshsha): I led a team to redesign and rebuild Goshsha, an AR retail app that lets shoppers scan products to see creator content, reviews, and virtual try-ons; we overhauled the UX for Gen Z shoppers, added community and onboarding flows, and implemented faster scanning and data retrieval in a React Native (Expo) + Firebase codebase. (2024-06) - [LifeTune](https://elaraliu.com/projects/life-tune): I led a small team to design and implement LifeTune, an iOS health app that turns fragmented fitness, nutrition, sleep, and mood data into a single “health score” with small, actionable suggestions, grounded in competitive analysis, interviews with four user groups, and iterative SwiftUI prototyping focused on simplification, routine fit, and motivation. (2023-09) - [BelugaSubs](https://elaraliu.com/projects/beluga-subs): I founded and led BelugaSubs, a 130-volunteer localization collective that ships ~40 subtitled tech and cooking videos per week for Chinese audiences. I built the internal infrastructure—a React + Node.js forced-alignment workstation and web drive—and designed agile workflows with tiered QA and SLAs, scaling the group to more than 20,000 videos and a paid service for top-100 Bilibili creators. (2019-07)