01 / Now
Building systems that stay accountable.
My work sits between law, data, and product: tools for records, models, maps, and careful human review.
Evanston and Chicago
About
Richard Zhu
I grew up in Beijing and now work from Evanston and Chicago. The thread is law, data, physics, maps, photographs, and practical systems for people who need to check hard claims.
Formation
I grew up in Beijing and learned early that serious work eventually has to leave the notebook. Physics competitions, presentations, debate rooms, and long practice nights made that concrete: build the answer, show the result, defend it clearly, and improve when someone finds the weak point.
At Northwestern, that habit moved into law, data, and product work. Legal Studies made institutions feel physical: judges, filings, records, clients, shelters, and the distance between a rule on paper and a person trying to use it. Physics and lab work kept me close to measurement, models, instruments, and the discipline of not over-reading a result.
The rest of the site comes from the same habits. I photograph skies, cities, aircraft, museums, roads, and quiet rooms because place changes how I think. I like maps, long walks, astronomy, classical objects, travel journals, and tools that make private or complex records easier to reason about. The easiest way to reach me is richardzhu2026@u.northwestern.edu.
Contact
Email is the cleanest first step.
For legal AI work, project materials, research questions, or collaboration, send a short note with the context and what you want to discuss.
Current chapterNowEvanston and Chicago
02 / 2025
Defense work raised the standard.
Working around legal records made the product problem concrete: AI is useful only when it helps a professional see the file more clearly.
Federal Defender Program, Chicago
03 / 2024
Finance made claims testable.
Institutional finance taught me to treat polished language as a hypothesis. The real work was what survived public data, regulation, and incentives.
ICBC, Beijing
04 / 2023
Los Angeles made physics tactile.
At UCLA PSPL, I worked through a biased-filter concept for secondary species emission from electric-thruster beam targets. The Los Angeles Mission gave the same season a service context, but the durable technical chapter was the lab: a model had to survive geometry, particle energy, instrumentation, and manufacturing.
UCLA PSPL; Los Angeles Mission
05 / High school
The early rooms were competitive and technical.
IYPT, CYPT, and ISSDC were early rooms for building a result, defending it clearly, and learning from people who were allowed to disagree.
BNU Experimental, Beijing