Data science students William Hou and Ashley Yung were recently recognized for “demonstrated ability, leadership, and professional promise” by the Orange County / Long Beach chapter of the American Statistical Association. Both graduated from UC Irvine’s Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS) in June of this year and while their paths to statistics differed, they share a similar passion for the field.
Hou’s interest in data science was first sparked in high school after analyzing competition data on the robotics team. Yung, who started out as a psychological sciences major, realized she had an interest in statistical methods and quantitative measures while conducting experiments in the social sciences setting.
“Both Ashley and William have been not only excellent students but also great peers,” says Associate Professor of Teaching Mine Dogucu, who nominated each for the student award. She has been particularly impressed by their outreach to other students through the Data@UCI student organization. “Under their leadership, Data@UCI has thrived.”
Demonstrated Leadership
Hou and a few friends founded Data@UCI in 2022, and he served as club president in 2022-23. “In the years since its founding, our club has grown to reach thousands of students, and we’ve established ourselves as the premier club for all things data at UCI,” says Hou. “I even leveraged my experience planning software hackathons to organize UCI’s very first data hackathon, bringing together hundreds of data enthusiasts around Southern California to learn together in a competitive setting.”
The hackathon continued this year, with help from Yung, who served as co-director of community development. In that role, she worked with other Data@UCI leaders to offer workshops, professional panels and speaker events to help students improve their analytical skills. Yung held a similar role in the Women in Information and Computer Sciences (WICS) student organization at UCI as well.
“In both organizations, I was an active club member dedicated to fostering community building and outreach,” says Yung. “I had the opportunity to meet and develop relationships with a lot of intelligent and passionate people.”
Yung stresses that her peers are also deserving of recognition. “I was extremely grateful to be recognized by the Orange County / Long Beach American Statistical Association [but] I also want to acknowledge all of my fellow data science peers at UCI, whom I believe are just as deserving of this award,” she says. “I am really fortunate to have attended UCI, where I’ve been able to meet so many inspiring people.”
Professional Promise
As Hou and Yung start their data science careers, they do so with a wealth of knowledge and experience. Hou worked with Jonathan Watanabe in the School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, analyzing real-world medical data to inform clinical care and improve patient outcomes. He also completed an internship at Atlassian, where he is now employed and will be contributing insights to its product and marketing divisions.
Yung interned at JP Morgan Chase, gaining hands-on experience working on projects related to automation and time-series forecasting. She also emphasizes the practical experience gained through her capstone course. “I really enjoyed the final capstone project!” she says. “With guidance from our professors and corporate partners, we were able to build a project from scratch and present it at the ICS Project Expo. Overall, it was a great experience.” The two-quarter capstone course is required of all data science majors, ensuring students learn how to apply statistical and computational principles to large-scale real-world data analysis problems.
Hou also highlights UCI’s focus on practical application. “I appreciate how UCI’s data science major puts emphasis on both the computer science and statistics aspects of the field,” he says. “Many other programs focus on one more than the other, which often leads to critical skills employers are looking for falling between the gaps. Though you should know the theory behind any analysis, it is equally important to understand the tools used to put them into practice.”
This is one of the benefits of UCI offering its data science major through the School of ICS, which houses both the Department of Computer Science and the Department of Statistics. It fosters an environment of interdisciplinary collaboration.
“I believe I speak for faculty from both departments,” says Docugu, “when I say we cannot wait to see these two students taking over the data science world as UCI alumni.”
— Shani Murray
