Skip to content
Portrait of Chengdong (Peter) Zhou

Chengdong (Peter) Zhou

Computational psychiatry. Reward learning, anhedonia, and multimodal biomarkers of psychiatric state — acoustic prosody, MEG, fMRI — plus accessible and inclusive research design.

czhou732@usc.edu · Los Angeles, CA

Education

Expected May 2027Los Angeles, CA

University of Southern California

B.A. Psychology, Neuroscience & Clinical focus

GPA 3.92 / 4.00 · Phi Beta Kappa, Epsilon of California — inducted Spring 2026, junior year

Aug 2023 – Jun 2025Barrett, The Honors College · Tempe, AZ

Arizona State University

B.A. Psychology (transferred to USC)

GPA 3.84 / 4.00 · Dean’s List, Spring 2024 – Fall 2025

Honors and awards

2026–27
NIH Undergraduate Scholarship Program (UGSP) Scholar
2026–27
Commissioner Michael L. Williams Endowed Scholar
2026
Phi Beta Kappa, Epsilon of California
2026
NIH Summer Internship Program Fellow — NIMH Experimental Therapeutics & Pathophysiology Branch
2026
Dornsife Experiential Learning Award
2024–25
Dean’s List, Arizona State University

Research experience

Feb 2026 – presentUniversity of Southern California

Founder & Project Lead

PRAXIS

Psychiatry Research, Analytics & eXperimental Innovation Society · Faculty sponsor: Dr. Laurent Itti

  • Founded and lead an undergraduate computational neuroscience group investigating acoustic biomarkers of depression through the dopaminergic reward system.
  • Preregistered the study on OSF (osf.io/4d6ey) and coordinated a multi-stream pipeline spanning acoustic analysis, self-report, and fMRI.
  • Recruited and manage two undergraduate research assistants across the acoustic and neuroimaging streams.
  • Built ClinicalWhisper, the open-source air-gapped transcription pipeline the group runs on sensitive clinical interviews.
May 2026 – presentNational Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD

NIH Summer Intern

NIMH Experimental Therapeutics & Pathophysiology Branch

PIs: Dr. Mark Kvarta & Dr. Samika Kumar

  • Building source-localization pipelines for resting-state MEG analyses of mood-disorder neural biomarkers.
  • Working on gamma-band spectral power and signal complexity in the insula as candidate markers of suicidal ideation.
Oct 2025 – presentUSC Viterbi School of Engineering

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Visual & Computational Neuroscience Lab

PI: Dr. Laurent Itti

  • Designed and deployed a fully accessible survey pipeline in Qualtrics with custom scripting, WCAG compliant, enabling participation from 291 visually impaired respondents.
  • First-authoring a review paper on AI-based visual assistive technology proposing a composable AI primitives framework, with collaborators at Penn State.
  • Analysed the NSF and NIH funding landscape to identify deployment and sustainability pathways for AI visual aids.
Oct 2025 – presentUSC Department of Psychology

Directed Research Fellow

Depression, Neurobiology, and Social Cognition Lab

PI: Dr. Stephen Read · PSYC 490X

  • Built a Rescorla-Wagner reinforcement learning simulation with self-derived parameters (α as dopaminergic learning rate, β as volitional effort in the inverse temperature), modelling how reward learning collapses under anhedonia.
  • Developed a formal framework mapping LHb-VTA circuit variables to RL parameters and their behavioural predictions, now the central analytical contribution to the lab’s review manuscript.
  • Synthesised literature on the LHb-VTA pathway and mTOR signalling to support hypothesis generation on rapid-acting antidepressants.

Publications and software

Skills

Programming
Python (PyTorch, scikit-learn, pandas, NumPy), R (tidyverse, ggplot2), Bash, Git, LaTeX
Modelling
Reinforcement-learning models, deep learning, classification and feature selection, SHAP, parameter sensitivity analysis
Speech & audio
OpenSMILE, librosa, Whisper, pyannote
Neuroimaging
MNE-Python source localisation, fMRI, BIDS-compliant pipelines
LLMs & HPC
Local air-gapped inference (Ollama, DeepSeek), NIH Biowulf, Slurm
Research tools
SPSS, Qualtrics, OSF preregistration, iSTAR IRB
Languages
English (fluent), Mandarin (native), Spanish (intermediate)

Clinical and service

Feb 2024 – present

Crisis Counselor

Crisis Text Line

  • De-escalated psychological crises for 200+ texters over SMS, managing 5–10 concurrent high-stakes conversations per shift.
Sep 2025 – Mar 2026

High-Impact Academic Tutor

Step Up Tutoring

  • Weekly one-to-one tutoring for underserved students, with personalised data-informed lesson plans.
Aug 2024 – Oct 2024

Registered Behavior Technician

Kyo

  • Delivered ABA interventions (DTT and NET) for children with autism spectrum disorder; tracked behavioural data and documented goal mastery.
Summer 2024

Summer Camp Counselor

The H.E.A.R.T. Center

  • Facilitated social-emotional learning for 30+ neurodivergent children and managed behavioural de-escalation.

Training and certifications

  • Responsible Conduct of Research — USC (CITI Program)
  • Social-Behavioral Human Subjects Research — USC (CITI Program)
  • Nonviolent Crisis Intervention, Blue Card — Crisis Prevention Institute
  • Certified Personal Trainer (NASM-CPT) — National Academy of Sports Medicine