Xuanlin Zhu

Research Portfolio: Mathematics, Systems & Critical Theory

I. Methodological & Critical Research

Public Scholarship: "This Musical 'Witch' is NOT ONE"

Feminist critical analysis of an original Chinese musical about the Scottish witch trials, deploying Irigaray, Rich, and Haraway within the Chinese repo genre. With appendix tracing the protagonist's literary lineage through Ibsen, Miller, Shaw, and Williams.

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Methodological Note: Stability of Semantic Transport

Deriving formal Lipschitz bounds for Word Mover's Distance to establish a "safe interpretation zone" for algorithmic literary criticism.

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Monograph: Epistemological Foundations of Geometric Models

A comparative analysis of Poincaré's Conventionalism, arguing that simulation parameters (refraction/temperature) dictate spatial axioms in game engines.

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Essay: For a New Kind of Game

Critical writing sample analyzing the intersection of Walter Benjamin's aesthetic theory and procedural rhetoric.

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Pilot Study: Sociolinguistic Perception of AI

Mixed-methods study investigating how punctuation markers like the em-dash influence user perception of "machine voice."

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II. Systems Engineering & Algorithms

SYSTEMS ARCHITECTURE

Cluster API Provider "Slinky"

A converged infrastructure architecture bridging Slurm and Kubernetes using the Composite Pattern to reduce idle resource waste.
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OPTIMIZATION

Fast Inverse Square Root Optimization

Automated derivation of approximate arithmetic constants via Differential Evolution. Characterizes the "fractal floor" error landscape and achieves 24% improvement over analytical baselines. (JMM 2026 Talk)
DATA-ORIENTED DESIGN

Columnar Game Logic

Empirical validation of DataFrame architectures (NumPy, Polars, Apache Arrow) for real-time simulation. Achieves 500K entities at 60 FPS using a Stratified Architecture that bridges data science tooling with game engine requirements.
HARDWARE

Eurorack & CPU Engineering

Documentation of a custom Zynthian-based Eurorack module and a homebrew CPU architecture.
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NLP / ML

TinyLite: Pruned BERT for Edge Spam Detection

Systematic compression of BERT-Tiny via head pruning and hidden dimension reduction, achieving 81.6% FLOP reduction with <1.1pp F1 loss. Validated across continual learning, federated learning, cross-domain transfer, and INT8 quantization scenarios.
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III. Game Design & Creative Practice

GAME DESIGN

Game Design Document (GDD)

A 39-page formal specification for Songs of Memory, a narrative RPG exploring existentialism and "Radical Hybridity."
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PUZZLE DESIGN

"Double Major" Puzzle

A logic/cryptography puzzle designed for the "Puzzle Hunt" format, exploring themes of academic intersectionality.
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