Amy attended Stanford for both her BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering, with a minor in Music. She met Elena Wagenmans and Cinnamon Sipper during the MS program.
Academic
Mechanical Engineering, School of Engineering. Minor in Music. Faculty advisor for Mobius: Professor Xiaolin Zheng (ME). As an undergraduate, Amy worked in the Stanford SHAPE Lab, a haptics research group focused on shape-changing interfaces and physical interaction design.
She took a gap year in 2021-22 to work at Apple before returning for her MS.
Study Abroad
Amy studied abroad in Berlin. No further details are documented.
Organizations
Amy was deeply involved in campus life, more so than her later startup-era self might suggest:
- Stanford Symphony Orchestra: She played clarinet here, extending the instrument she started in Peoria with CIYS.
- Stanford Queer and Asian Club: Vice President from October 2019. Planned quarterly events, hosted discussions on LGBTQ topics.
- Stanford Women in Design: Member.
- Engineers for a Sustainable World: Member. This tracks with the Mobius origin in recycling/sustainability.
- Stanford Public Interest, Tech, and Design: Intern from December 2019. Worked at the Stanford Legal Design Lab mapping the landscape of public-interest tech.
Writing
Amy wrote for The Stanford Daily in spring 2020. Published articles include "Songs you would hear at TAP" (April 9, 2020), "Love in the time of COVID-19" (April 8, 2020), and "19 things you can do during COVID-19 self-quarantine" (March 2020).
These articles, written during early COVID, show a lighter version of Amy than the one who appears in the March 2026 diary entries. She was writing about music playlists and quarantine boredom, not co-founder dynamics and validation spirals.
The Mobius Origin
Stanford's TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy listed Mobius as a 2023-24 grantee: "Mobius is automating recycling supply chains for companies, to help them turn their waste into an asset. Team: Cinnamon Sipper (MS ME), Amy Zhou (MS ME), Elena Wagenmans (MS ME), Prof. Xiaolin Zheng (ME, PI)."
This is the institutional record of the three-way founding that Elena would later reduce to a solo narrative.
Languages
Amy's Stanford-era LinkedIn lists four languages: Chinese (professional working proficiency), English (native), Spanish (limited working proficiency), and Python. She listed Python as a language. This is either a joke or the most mechanical-engineer thing possible.
Ongoing Connection
As of March 2026, Amy is still on the Stanford Product Realization Lab (PRL) mailing list. She received an invite to the "Meet the Makers" event on March 18, 2026. Frances Yang and Brittany Schwartz are PRL contacts. The PRL is Stanford's hands-on manufacturing and prototyping lab, the kind of place where Amy's "factories don't care about your pitch deck" philosophy would have started taking shape.
Legacy
Stanford appears on Amy's LinkedIn and Twitter bios. It is the credential that opens doors (a16z Speedrun, Apple, Vizcom) and the place where the central relationships of her twenties began. Elena still describes herself as "Stanford B.S. M.S." in her LinkedIn headline.
The Music minor is notable because it connects two threads: the clarinet from Peoria, the symphony orchestra at Stanford, and the fact that Amy's creative instincts extend beyond engineering. She does not talk about music in her 2026 diary, but it was significant enough to minor in.