Alison Yuhan Yao Home

About Me

I am current pursuing a MS in Data Science at Harvard University.

Name: Yuhan (Alison) Yao
Phone: 917-495-4827
Current Location: Boston, MA, US

Expected graduation date: May 2024
Email: yuhan_yao[at]g.harvard[dot]edu
Home City: Shanghai, China

DS Skills: SQL, Python (Pandas, Matplotlib, Scikit-learn, OpenCV, Pytorch), R (ggplot2)
Software Engineering Skills: HTML, CSS, JavaScript (React.js), Python Flask
Hobbies & Interests: Guitar, Badminton, Blogging, Travel, Netflix

Hi there! This is Alison. After graduating from NYU with a Bachelor's degree in Data Science, I am now pursuing a Master's degree in Data Science at Harvard University. I aspire to be a Data Scientist who explore the world through the quantitative lens and find connections between everything in life.

I have experience working/researching in the field of Data Science, Computer Vision, and Optimization. I enjoy solving real-life problems with computational methods and find insight in datasets.

I look forward to applying what I've learned to help businesses grow and making a positive impact on the world.

My Resume

Please download my resume here. Updated August 2023.

Education

MS in Data Science

09/2022 - 05/2024

Harvard University, Massachusetts, US

GPA: 3.96/4.0

BS in Data Science

09/2018 - 05/2022

New York University New York, US 01/2022 - 05/2022

New York University Abu Dhabi, UAE 09/2021 - 12/2021

New York University Shanghai, China 09/2018 - 05/2021

GPA: 3.94/4.0

Honors: Graduated with Summa Cum Laude, Dean's List, Global Quintessence Scholarship ($39,000 awarded for top 1%)

Research Experience

Research Assistant

09/2023 - Present

Civic Data Project (Advisor: Prof. Liz McKenna & Jae Kim)

Creating and cleaning the largest database of civic organization email addresses in the United States

Student Researcher

05/2021 - 09/2022

Optimization of NYU Shanghai Shuttle Bus Schedule (Advisor: Prof. Zhibin Chen)

Shuttle Bus Scheduling Optimization based on Spatio-Temporal Network [publication in progress]

Proposed a tailored Genetic Algorithm based on Python to solve a black-box optimization problem and devised an improved shuttle bus schedule, which reduced cost by 6.82% while satisfying students' demand
Formulated a real-life vehicle scheduling problem into 2 variations of Spatio-temporal networks and constructed a non-closed form objective function with 3 real-life constraints
Led a team of 2 students and 1 shuttle service supervisor and organized bi-weekly meetings with advisor

Research Assistant

08/2020 - 09/2020

History Beyond (Advisor: Prof. Heather Ruth Lee)

Implemented Optical Character Recognition using Python OpenCV and Google Tesseract to recognize English words in ancient fonts, digitalizing and preserving historical documents
Utilized Python Pandas package to wrangle and organize tabular data with 18,000+ entries from Chinese Restaurant Database
Presented research outcome to NYU Shanghai Chancellor, Provost, Dean and Professors

Research Assistant

03/2019 - 12/2019

Open Source Swarm Intelligence Robotics Research (Advisor: Prof. Rodolfo Cossovich)

Designed, 3D-printed, and tested infrared positioning device of robot “Swarmesh” and built scalable and decentralized swarm intelligent robots from scratch
Compared Swarmesh with Kilobot, Jasmine and R-one to identify the limitations of existing Swarm robot systems
Published and presented paper Framework for Present Swarm Robotic Systems and New Implementations to Increase Scalability at SWARM 2019 robotics conference in Japan

Work Experience

Data and Applied Scientist Intern

05/2023 - 08/2023

Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA, US

Developed an automated framework to conduct correlation analysis and causal inference between continuous and categorical variables that can be easily generalized to 65k+ pairs of node health signals and customer-impacting events in Azure cloud system
Analyzed correlation relationships of 3420 samples on 57 signal-event pairs using Python to establish 7 statistically significant processes and leveraged proprietary auto causal inference engine to validate 9 causal links on 3 processes, enhancing node health anomaly detection pipeline with customer impact analysis
Engineered and cleansed 650+ billion rows of big data using Kusto Query Language by using statistical methods to work around database and hardware limitations while ensuring analysis accuracy, pioneering a big data handling method for colleagues
Collaborated across 4 teams in different time zones and presented internship outcomes to CVPs and 140+ full-time employees

Data Science Intern

02/2021 - 05/2021

PayPro Global, Remote

Utilized Python to implement K-means and Hierarchical Clustering methods to transform customer recency, frequency, and monetary values, which segmented customers into 3 target groups and engineered 8 features for further prediction
Constructed and finetuned a customer lifetime value prediction XGBoost model with 85%+ accuracy, assisting the marketing team to refine customer target strategy
Created and designed a Power BI data visualization report featuring 16 plots on webpage template performance, enabling the frontend team to debug hidden template errors and optimize template functionality
Presented business insights to CEO and team leader and wrote requested executive summary detailing model mechanism and suggested marketing strategy for senior leadership

Artificial Intelligence Intern

06/2020 - 08/2020

Shanghai Hyron Software Co., LTD, Shanghai, China

Preprocessed and extracted structural information from driver's license photos using Python OpenCV and trained a 95%+ accurate CRNN model to recognize numbers, dates, and 7000+ Japanese characters, saving time and manual labor for DMV
Implemented an automated pose detector of abnormal behavior for AirPods factory safety check using YOLOv5 and Resnet18 models, preventing theft and larceny
Collaborated with 7 other team members and successfully delivered 2 fully-deployed AI products to clients in 3 months

Data Scientist & Software Developer

04/2020 - 01/2022

Coopsight, LLC, Shanghai, China & Abu Dhabi, UAE

Managed and maintained data extraction and modification of Firebase NoSQL database, ensuring stable and smooth data connection between frontend and backend
Built and tested 6 web pages using React.js and Tailwind.css, with features including embedded Google map, company searching, user matching, enhancing user experience
Tested business hypotheses and product-market fit by cold-calling 50+ people and interviewing 20+ potential customers and industry experts to propose data-driven solutions for product iteration