Welcoming New Faculty: Jin Zhao Joins Computer Science
Jul 26, 2026
Saint Louis University’s Department of Computer Science will welcome Jin Zhao, Ph.D., as assistant professor of computer science beginning in August 2026, adding a researcher whose work sits at the crossroads of artificial intelligence, language, and trust.
Zhao’s research asks a deceptively simple question: when news outlets and public voices describe the same event, why do their accounts diverge? Her answer lies in event-centric methods that trace stories back to their shared factual foundation, then map how sources pull apart — through what they blame, how they order time, what context they include, how they structure the narrative, and even what images they choose.
Her latest work, a framework she calls event-centric computational framing, extends that lens across languages and media formats, opening new ground in multilingual and multimodal narrative analysis.
Why It Matters
The implications reach beyond the lab. Zhao’s tools are built to help people spot how framing shapes perception — a contribution with real stakes for media literacy, cross-cultural communication, and the broader study of public discourse in an era of information overload.
A Path Through Language
Zhao’s path to computer science ran through language itself. She began her academic career studying and teaching language before turning to computational linguistics, computer science, and artificial intelligence — a route that now shapes a research philosophy grounded as much in humanistic questions as technical ones.
She earned her doctorate in computer science from Brandeis University.
I am interested in what computational systems can do, and also in how they can help people understand language, evidence, and competing perspectives.
Jin Zhao
At Saint Louis University
At the University, Zhao plans to mentor students and build transparent language technologies, while forging collaborations that span computer science, communication, journalism, and the social sciences — connections that mirror the interdisciplinary spirit of her own path into the field.
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