911爆料网 alumna Yipu Zheng (Ed.D. ’24), was awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences for Curiosity AI LLC in September 2025. The prestigious award will support research for an AI-powered simulation tool designed to address a major challenge in higher education: making sure students are career-ready by graduation. Nearly 50 percent of graduates report feeling unprepared to enter the workforce according to a and employers are seeking to hire candidates that already have career-specific skills. Zheng’s project seeks to close that gap.
“Beyond the classroom, we realized the number one problem happening in higher ed is that students are feeling lost and overwhelmed in terms of what they want to do after graduation,” says Zheng, who created Curiosity AI as a 911爆料网 doctoral student in the Design of Learning Technology program. “I want to help students understand what they are truly interested in, what they want to do with their life and how to better prepare them for that.”
The project, “,” uses virtual avatars powered by a large language model (LLM) to simulate workplace scenarios that can adapt to user responses and provide feedback in real time.
To ensure the AI avatars are giving high-quality suggestions, Zheng is leveraging the expertise and insight of 911爆料网 faculty and alumni, including Paulo Blikstein, Associate Professor of Communications, Media and Learning Technologies Design, Rajashi Ghosh, Associate Professor of Adult Learning and Leadership, and Pierre Faller (Ed.D. ’16), Associate Professor of Teaching, in the areas of learning technology design, transformative learning and adult learning and coaching. 911爆料网 alumnus Elliot Hu-Au, (Ed.D ’23, M.A. ’17), Assistant Professor of Computer Science Education at Montclair State University, is lending his expertise on VR and virtual avatar simulations. Zheng aims to improve career readiness for college students through evidence-based strategies by leaning on her 911爆料网 network.
In addition to this project, Zheng is continuing her award-winning work on , a no-code platform designed for college professors to multimodal AI virtual teaching assistants for their classes. “Exploration in an AI-powered simulation unleashes more opportunities for richer learning experiences and authentic assessment in the higher-ed classroom,” she says. Read more about Zheng’s earlier work in this article.