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Hi, I am Qihua

Qihua Zhong

Data Scientist & AI Engineer

I build data and AI systems end to end: collecting the data, modeling, deploying, and checking that the output is right. Since 2025 I have worked independently. I built and run GPU PRIX (gpuprix.com), a GPU spec and price comparison site with 1,200+ daily unique visitors, including its data collection pipelines and the LLM workflows that translate its content and check its product listings. I also built pipelines for high-volume crypto market data and forecasting models on top of them. Before that: doctoral studies (ABD) at HEC Montréal on deep reinforcement learning for inventory, and three years of demand forecasting and planning in Montreal.

Projects

GPU PRIX
GPU PRIX
Independent Developer 2025 - Present

GPU spec and price comparison site with 1,200+ daily unique visitors. I built its automated data collection pipelines, an LLM localization workflow (a frontier model writes the content, a local model translates it, automated checks reject bad output) and a scheduled LLM agent (LangGraph, Claude API) that checks scraped listings are filed under the right GPU.

DRL for Multi-echelon inventory problems
DRL for Multi-echelon inventory problems

Doctoral research applying deep reinforcement learning to multi-echelon inventory optimization; built a custom simulation environment and trained TD3, A2C and DQN agents (Stable Baselines3, PyTorch) to make inventory decisions. See my ▶️presentation for IVADO Digital October.

Kaggle - Kore 2022
🥇 Solo Gold Medalist May 2022

Competed solo in Kore 2022, a Google-sponsored simulation competition with strict per-turn compute and memory limits, and placed 4th of 469 (solo gold medal, $3,000 prize). Gained an edge by rewriting the simulation logic as vectorized NumPy matrix operations. A 📝write-up is on Kaggle.

CodeML Hackathon 2022
CodeML Hackathon 2022
🥇 Hackathon Winner October 2022

1st place in Team Challenge #3 (Gunshot Audio Detection) with a custom CNN, and 2nd place among 100+ participants in the individual machine learning quiz.

Pop Dictionary
Pop Dictionary
Cofounder/Developer

Crowd-sourced Chinese-slang reference (“Urban Dictionary for Chinese”); used open-source LLM embeddings for similarity search to surface related terms.

Education

2019-2024
Doctoral studies (ABD), Operations Management and Logistics
Supervised by: Yossiri Adulyasak, Martin Cousineau and Raf Jans
Awards
  • FRQNT Doctoral Research Scholarship
  • J.A. DeSève (PhD) Merit Scholarship
GPA: 4.03 out of 4.3
Taken Courses
Course NameTotal CreditObtained Credit
(MATH-80629A) Machine Learning I4.34.3
(MATH-80600A) Machine Learning II: Deep Learning4.34
(MC-COMP767) Reinforcement Learning (at McGill University)44
(MATH-80680A) Dynamic Optimisation4.34
(OPER-80518A) Supply Chain Management4.34.3
B.Econ. in Finance
Extracurricular Activities
  • Excellent Academic Performance Scholarship, 2011 (Top 3%)
  • Excellent Sports & Arts Performance Scholarship, 2009 (Top 3%)
  • Volunteer Association
  • Track & Field Team

Experiences

1
Independent Data Scientist & AI Engineer
Self-Employed

January 2025 - Present, Montréal, Canada

Responsibilities:
  • Built and run GPU PRIX (gpuprix.com), a GPU spec and price comparison site (Next.js, React, TypeScript, AWS EC2) with automated data collection pipelines; grew it to 1,200+ daily unique visitors by using traffic analysis to find underserved markets and expanding into them.
  • Built a multi-agent localization workflow: a frontier LLM agent writes English content and delegates translation to a specialized local model (served with llama.cpp), with automated checks on length, glossary terms, numbers and code that reject a bad translation and ask for a revision.
  • Built a scheduled LLM agent (LangGraph, Claude API) that checks each scraped listing is filed under the right GPU and re-files or removes mismatches, with spending caps, a review-only mode and an accuracy test set that gate any change to live data.
  • Built low-latency pipelines processing GBs/day of real-time trade and order-book data from multiple exchanges; trained multi-target LightGBM quantile models of short-term price volatility and returns.
  • Built liquidation-risk maps from account-level position data (self-hosted blockchain node), showing the price levels at which leveraged positions would be forced to close.
  • Built REST and WebSocket services (Python/FastAPI) so data ingestion and feature engineering stay decoupled from training, inference and execution.

Part-Time Lecturer, Operations Management
HEC Montréal

September 2023 - December 2024, Montréal, Canada

Responsibilities:
  • Taught Operations Management (10500A) to undergraduate cohorts; graded assignments and exams.
2

3
Research Assistant
Southern University of Science & Technology

July 2018 - August 2019, Shenzhen, China

Responsibilities:
  • Encoded DNA sequence patterns and epigenetic data into embedding vectors, built and interpreted CNN models to predict gene expression levels.

Demand Planner
DHP Furniture, a division of Dorel Industries

March 2017 - March 2018, Montréal, Canada

Responsibilities:
  • Led the implementation of Demand Solutions DSX, a forecasting and planning software, in the company.
  • Managed demand forecasts for multiple e-commerce accounts.
  • Produced ad-hoc quantitative reports and analysis for management.
4

5
A.M.G. Medical Inc.

March 2015 - March 2017, Montréal, Canada

Operations Analyst

June 2016 - March 2017

  • Delivered weekly overstock reports and led the monthly S&OP meeting with the buyer, VP of Operations and product managers, where the analysis set purchasing and inventory decisions.
Forecasting & Planning Analyst

March 2015 - June 2016

  • Improved forecast accuracy by modeling seasonal factors and cleaning outliers, lifting order fill rate from the mid-80s% to 90%+ without increasing inventory levels.
  • Automated the demand-forecasting pipeline, previously manual and limited to the highest-priority product lines, to cover the full 3,000+ SKU catalog, including custom dashboards (HTML/JavaScript) to visualize inventory projections and flag sales trends and anomalies to the sales team.

Skills

Certificates

C Programming with Linux

A 7-course specialization that covers various topics: Linux Basics, Language Foundations, Modular Programming and Memory Management, Pointers and Memory Management, Advanced Data Types, etc.

Mathematics for Machine Learning

A sequence of 3 courses on the prerequisite mathematics for applications in data science and machine learning.

Deep Learning

A 5-course specialization that covers various topics: Neural Networks and Deep Learning, Convolutional Neural Networks, Sequence Models, Hyperparameter Tuning, Regularization and Optimization and Structuring Machine Learning Projects.

Achievements

1st place, CodeML Hackathon 2022

Solo Gold Medal, Kaggle - Kore 2022

Gold Medal, University Track & Field Meets