Staff Profile

Biography

My name is Yan Lin, you can call me Quinne. I am a PhD student in Computer Science, working on machine learning and multimodal learning, starting in March 2025 (originally started in September 2024, delayed to Spring 2025 due to ATAS). My research is fully funded by Postgraduate Research Studentship (5 year UKRI stipend).

I am working as a Postgraduate Teaching Assistant in the School of Computing, acting as a demonstrator and marker for undergraduate and taught postgraduate courses, assisting in supervising taught postgraduate dissertations, invigilating examiners, providing IT support for the urban science building, and acting as an open days and offer holder experience days guided tours.

Current Research

My doctoral project (2025-) focuses on deep learning, generative AI, and LLMs. Particularly transformer-based architectures, for tasks such as text generation, domain adaptation, and multilingual comprehension. I am especially interested in the interplay between model performance and ethical considerations, including bias detection, representation, and explainability. 

About Me

Originally from China, I earned my BA in Finance and Economics in China (During my junior year, I was selected for an exchange program at National Taipei University in Taiwan due to my academic performance). After that, I worked for three years in China's four largest state-owned banks and ten largest brokerage firms.

With my interest in math and programming, I changed my major to Master of Data Science at Durham University (2022-2023, 78%). My Machine Learning course assignment received a 90% first place high score and my Critical Perspectives in Data Science course essay was chosen as the example for the next cohort. (Others: Introduction to Mathematics for Data Science - 92%, Programming for Data Science - 83%, Introduction to Statistics for Data Science - 82%, Data Exploration, Visualization and Unsupervised Learning - 80%, Introduction to Computer Science - 76%, etc) I have also attended OXML2024 (Representation Learning and Generative AI summer school at University of Oxford's Mathematical Institute). I am a student member of IEEE.

My Durham dissertation used an integrated neural network model to predict the outcome of The Hundred cricket matches, achieving a successful prediction rate of 76%. I had also served as a student representative and postgraduate ambassador at Durham University, and am a member of the GCR at Ustinov College, supporting sexual miniortiy.

In the 2024 PhD application journey, I got 6 fully-funded international scholarships from Russell Group universities (QS 20–150), such as Durham University Business School Scholarship, Durham University joint PhD Scholarship - China Scholarship Council, Newcastle University 5-year Computing PhD Scholarship, and Queen Mary University of London 5-year MRes+PhD scholarship, etc.

Beyond academic research, I enjoy playing script-based games like murder mystery games, escape rooms, and watching detective series. I am a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes. With a decade of experience in fine arts, I love visiting music festivals and museum exhibitions around the world. I am proud to be a member of Women in STEM. I regularly update my study notes to help non-technical individuals get started with AI.

I welcome any enquiries regarding my research, teaching, or potential collaboration opportunities.

Please feel free to get in touch (y.lin64@ncl.ac.uk or quinne.lin@ncl.ac.uk).

Research Interests

• Deep Learning
• Machine Learning
• Generative AI
• Large Language Models

• March - May 2025: Lab Demonstrator and Marker for BSc 1st Programming Portfolio (2) - CSC1035 - Java
• June 2025: Invigilator for June resit exams & School of Computing PCs Refresh
• June - August 2025: Provide general master's dissertation project support for CSC8099 and CSC8499 with Dr Ellis Solaiman.