Student Enrichment

Student Fellows

2014 – 2015

Yixi Zhang

Yixi Zhang is a graduate student pursuing a Master’s degree in Business Analytics at Fordham University.

With her Bachelor degree of financial management and her knowledge of data analysis, she offers unique perspectives and solutions for the different types of projects and is able to use diverse tools to gain insight and offer recommendations from multiple perspectives. She participates in the Town & Gown project analyzing building projects data in NYC to help NYC Department of Design and Construction to make better decisions. Currently, she is working on STEP program to lead high school students to be more engaged in the world of data analytics. Additionally, Yixi is a graduate assistant and an active member of the Innovation Lab in the Center for Digital Transformation. Through these activities, Yixi hopes to gain experience in the essence of analytics and, communication, hard work and efficiency.

She plans to learn as much as can in the business analytics world and find a position where she can utilize her skills and improve her career path. Presently, Yixi is assisting with numerous Center projects.

Xiayu Zeng (Carol)

Carol is a graduate student at Fordham, pursuing a Master’s degree in Business Analytics, with an expected graduation date of December 2015. Prior to coming to Fordham in 2014, she obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in applied mathematics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

At Fordham, she has worked on numerous real-world type projects that honed her problem solving and analytical skills. She currently participates in Town & Gown project that analyzes infrastructure project data in NYC using various BI tools. Through this experience she developed an interest in how data analysis assists decision making and problem solving. She is currently working with high school students in the STEP internship program and encourages them to develop an interest in data analytics.

She is driven to be the best at what she does and learn as much as she can to best serve the needs of the industry. She would like to develop to the point that she could become that go-to person whom others rely on in her future career. Carol is participating in several Center for Digital Transformation research projects.

Nancy Yi Chun Chien

With a Bachelor’s Degree and Master’s Degree in Statistics from Taiwan, Nancy worked at Fortune 500 companies such as IBM, TSMC, and Foxconn, providing statistical and software solutions.

Nancy is pursuing the Master of Science in Business Analytics degree at Fordham University and expects to complete the program by December 2015. She demonstrates extensive expertise in data science and won 1st prize twice, once in data hackathon sponsored by Microsoft and another sponsored by Deloitte. In the NYC Town & Gown project, Nancy contributes to improving the data quality of building projects for NYC government. Nancy also conducted the summer STEP program in analytics for high school students at Fordham. The goal was to help develop STEM and analytical in high school students in NYC.

Her career goal is to be a professional data scientist with strong skills in exploratory data analysis and recognizing how findings affect business goals and delivering actionable insights. Nancy is working on several projects for the Center for Digital Transformation.

Michael Khayyat

Michael Khayyat is pursuing a Master of Science in Business Analytics at Fordham University. He received his Bachelor of Arts Degree in Economics from Harvard University. At Fordham, Michael has been a Graduate Assistant for two professors in the Management Systems and Information Systems Departments. Since September 2014, Michael has been serving as the President of the Fordham Business Analytics Society. In addition to his campus engagements, he is working on completing a Town & Gown project to analyze financial data for the NYC Mayor’s Office Department of Design and Construction.

Prior to joining Fordham, Michael completed a six months internship with the Harvard Business School Europe Research Center in France, where he co-authored a case study with an HBS professor and members of the center.

Michael had the opportunity to work with global retail corporations in logistics and merchandise analysis. Through this experience Michael realized the importance and need for better optimized business processes and analytics tools which led him to choosing this field of study.

Zixin Mao

Mao is an explorer driven by endless curiosity. He is currently pursuing a Master of Science in Business Analytics at Fordham where he works to become a Christopher Columbus and a Sherlock Holmes in the world of data. He received a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Penn State.

Prior to joining Fordham, Mao took various leadership and creative roles in manufacturing, finance, telecommunication software, web development, graphics design and media production. At Fordham, he is advisor to the Fordham Business Analytics Society and leader of Town & Gown project for the NYC Department of Design and Construction. He is also an active supporter and chaperone of Global Outreach Habitat for Humanity Guatemala project.

In his spare time, he continues to make new friends, hike national parks, travel the world and learn about Mars colonization.

Travis Petersen

Travis Petersen is a candidate for the Master of Science in Business Analytics degree at Fordham University’s Gabelli School of Business. He was drawn to the program after seeing the transformative potential of data science while working in the mortgage industry as a financial analyst.

Travis graduated from Pepperdine University with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics with minors in Applied Math and Spanish. Travis is an active member of the Fordham Business Analytics Society.

Zhisheng Zhang

Zhisheng Zhang is a graduate student in the Master of Science in Applied Statistics and Decision Making program at Fordham University.

Driven by his strong interest in data analysis, he works as a graduate assistant for the director of MS in Business Analytics. He is proficient in many business analytic tools such as IBM Cognos, Tableau, DB2, SPSS Modeler, Excel and applying programming skills to conduct data analysis such as R, Python and SAS. Prior to Fordham, he received his Bachelor’s degree in Automation with a dual degree in Mathematical Finance. With the interdisciplinary background in quantitative finance, business analytic and applied statistics, he developed and revised many workshops for R, SAS, IBM Cognos, QlikView, Tableau and AWS/Cloudera platforms. He also completed several projects related to statistical inference and data analysis during working as a graduate assistant.