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Zijian Wang

Graduate StudentEmail Zijian Wang

Zijian graduated from the University of California, Irvine in June 2022 double majored in Mathematics (Finance concentration) and Quantitative Economics. At UC Irvine, Zijian systematically learned multidisciplinary knowledge in mathematics, statistics, economics, programming, and finance. In his undergraduate studies, Zijian built a solid basis in quantitative and programming fields and found his passion in pursuing a data analysis career. Striving to explore the real-world applications of data analysis, Zijian completed many hands-on data-driven projects. Particularly enlightening was the analysis of COVID-19 data in the US by Mathematica. Zijian collected data from the COVID-19 tracking website, implemented data cleaning, visualized the diagnosis data and growth trend, and mapped the visualization outcomes of each state to the corresponding position of the United State map. Zijian also extracted the route data of flights that have been diagnosed with COVID-19 in the US, made analysis and visualization, and came to the conclusion that COVID-19 propagates rapidly due to ineffective air traffic control, which became the punchline of the project and was highly commended by Professor Christopher Davis. To experience real-world analysis work, Zijian performed as a statistical specialist intern at Pingdu Municipal Bureau of Human Resource and Social Security. He used Python, SQL, and Tableau proficiently to collect, clean, analyze, and visualize social security related data like the average wage, unemployment rate, unemployment insurance coverage of employees, etc. from relevant government departments and companies. Through academic projects and professional attempts, Zijian was intrigued by the process of drawing easy-to-understand conclusions from massive and cumbersome data and demonstrated outstanding leadership and communication skills in the working field. Zijian is excited to join the MSiA program* to consolidate his techniques to integrate data engineering and data science and to generate innovative analytics solutions. At Northwestern, Zijian looks forwards to learning from the leading experts, innovators, and industry luminaries and collaborating professionally with his elite classmates. Outside of class, Zijian is a lover of outdoor activities, he joined the UC Irvine sailing club in his undergraduate and traveled to most states in the US. Lastly, Zijian believes he will be well prepared for his career in data analysis after graduation and he can’t wait to apply his abilities to create real-world value.

*later renamed MS in Machine Learning and Data Science