On June 25, Zhang competed in a poster session as part of the FastForward program for the Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America (RESNA) . Her poster, titled "Understanding Goals of Image Exploration Procedures by Blind Users", showed how computer-supported interfaces enable blind users to explore digital images in real time. The research presents the goals behind different user behaviors for non-vision image understanding, and details image assistive strategies developed to increase the efficiency of blind users exploring images non-visually and independently.

The work was co-advised by Brad Duerstock, Associate Professor of Practice in Purdue's School of Industrial Engineering with a joint appointment the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, and Juan Wachs, the James A. and Sharon M. Tompkins Rising Star Associate Professor of Industrial Engineering.

"Being among the Top 20 poster presentations out of 450 accepted posters strengthened my enthusiasm for our research that helps people with disabilities," said Zhang. "This experience also prepared for me to explore more opportunities to integrate artificial intelligence with assistive technologies."

"I hope our research will also inspire others in this field," she added.

RehabWeek is a week-long event that brings together different conferences in the field of rehabilitation technology at the same time and place in order to foster cross-disciplinary communication and the development of relationships between different players. The 2019 event included attendees from six societies: the International Functional Electrical Stimulation Society (IFESS), the International Consortium on Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR), the International Industry Society in Advanced Rehabilitation Technology (IISART), the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine (ACRM), the Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America (RESNA), and the International Society for Prosthetics and Orthotics (ISPO Canada).