Dr. Zhao is an Associate Professor in the School of Engineering and Computer Science at Washington State University Vancouver. She received her Ph.D. from Department of Computer Science at the University of Saskatchewan in 2012. She previously received an M.Sc. from the same university, and a B.Sc. from Department of Computer Science, Nanjing University. From 2010 to 2012, she worked as a research associate in the Faculty of Computer Science at Dalhousie University, where she also served as a sessional instructor.