People / Students / Class of 2026
Yiping Gao graduated from Washington University in St. Louis in 2025 with a Bachelor of Science in Data Science. Originally from Shenzhen, China, he explored aerospace engineering and architecture before discovering his passion for solving complex problems through data. He enjoys designing workflows that bring order to chaos—and a bit of elegance to messy datasets.
Yiping has gained experience across asset management, healthcare, and academic research. At Yulan Asset Management, he created a factor-weighting algorithm that improved equity strategy returns by 23%. At OhioHealth, he developed a speech-processing pipeline that used Whisper and large language models to perform sentiment analysis on customer service conversations, helping improve patient experience insights. He also worked with WashU Med to build NLP models that score residency essays on soft traits like empathy and leadership.
Outside of data, Yiping is a licensed private pilot who finds joy and focus in the skies. Whether flying solo over the Midwest or planning cross-country routes, he enjoys the technical precision and situational awareness that aviation demands—skills that also fuel his approach to machine learning. Through the MLDS program, he looks forward to deepening his expertise, learning from like-minded peers, and continuing to build systems that are practical, scalable, and just a bit adventurous.
