Yifan Mao

Biography

MEng Concentration: Financial Engineering
Anticipated Graduation Date: December 2016
Areas of Interest:

Yifan Mao received her bachelor’s degree in Mathematical Economics from Fudan University. She quickly established her passion for finance during her sophomore year at the Academy Program on Deutsche Bank’s trading floor. After that, she tried various roles within the industry, including being a Sales and Trading summer analyst at CICC, an Algorithm Trading project intern at Morgan Stanley, and her current position which involves Credit Modeling and Analytics at Morgan Stanley New York.

Bridging Yifan’s former real-world working experience and the solid expertise she learned at CFEM, she is dedicated to pursuing a career in quantitative trading or investment position. Her outstanding statistical R programming ability, data analysis expertise in Excel and SQL, object-oriented programming experience with Java, and familiarity with various optimization topics have fully equipped her for a position in the field.

Beyond the basic requirements of the job, she deeply values learning as a life-long process, seeing it as the key to being a successful quant. She is currently teaching herself Machine Learning and Python. Her project on ETF price-tracking arbitrage strategy was commented by Professor James Renegar as ‘highly creative’ and ‘of real depth’.

In addition to demonstrating superior technical skills, Yifan also shows great command over soft skills such as communication and negotiation. She once persuaded 33 CEOs and CFOs from 15 different industries to help her with the research into China’s Small and Middle enterprises. In her undergraduate study, she was the class president and campus leader associate of Junior Achievement. Yifan is also a big fan of volunteer causes. She went to the post-earthquake area in China to hold a summer camp for over 100 children. In her spare time, she loves cooking, swimming and training at the gym.