Behavioral AI, Digital Health, and Agent Systems
Zhiyuan "Ryan" Wang
I am a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Virginia, where I work on ubiquitous sensing, behavioral AI, and mobile systems for health.
Alongside my academic work, I build AI agent infrastructure: orchestration, tool use, and developer systems for reliable long-running agents. Starting in May 2026, I will join Meta Reality Labs Research as a Research Scientist.
About
Hi! I am Zhiyuan "Ryan" Wang.
I am a Ph.D. Candidate in Systems and Information Engineering at the University of Virginia, advised by Prof. Laura E. Barnes in the Sensing Systems for Health Lab and Link Lab.
Starting May 2026, I will join Meta Reality Labs Research as a Research Scientist, working on Behavioral AI and Proactive Agents for next-generation personal wearables.
My research develops ubiquitous sensing and intervention systems to enhance human health and well-being through interdisciplinary collaborations spanning medicine, nursing, psychology, and bioethics. I also build AI agent infrastructure, systems that make AI agents work reliably at scale.
Previously, I was a Multimodal Behavioral AI Research Scientist Intern at Meta Reality Labs Research (2025) and an AI/ML Data Scientist Intern at Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine (2024). I received my B.S. in Computer Science from Xiamen University, China (2021).
Research Keywords: Digital Health, Ubiquitous Computing, Mobile Computing, Human-Centered AI, Behavioral AI, AI Agent Systems
Experience
Meta Reality Labs Research -- Research Scientist (starting May 2026)
Behavioral AI and proactive agents for next-generation personal wearables
Meta Reality Labs Research -- Research Scientist Intern (May--Oct 2025)
Multimodal Behavioral AI, Redmond, WA. Mentors: Robert Cavin, Michael Proulx
Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine -- AI/ML Data Scientist Intern (May--Dec 2024)
Remote. Mentors: Mehdi Boukhechba, Stefan Avey
Selected Awards
- 2025 UVA Link Lab Distinguished Research Award
- 2025 NSF-EMBS-Google NextGen Scholar in Biomedical Informatics
- 2025 UVA All-University Graduate Teaching Award
- 2024 UVA Sture G. Olsson Endowed Fellowship ($12,000)
- 2024 NSF Cyber-Physical System (CPS) Rising Star
- 2024 University of Virginia Engineering Teaching Fellowship (~$20,000)
- 2024 University of Virginia Ruthie Oxford Memorial Award
- 2021 University of Virginia SIE Departmental Fellowship (~$55,000)
- 2020 Xiamen University Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award & Funding (~$10,000)