Brian Yao
Fun fact
I'm very good at whistling, which is weird because I can't sing to save my life. I can whistle to any song with perfect pitch, but when I sing I feel like a baby somewhere in the world dies.
Hobbies/interests
I'm a pretty big sports fan. Mostly like football, basketball, professional or college.
Any TV shows / movies you're into
I'm a huge Marvel fan, just anything Marvel. Besides that, at one point in time, I had a long anime phase. But some of my favorite shows are Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, Game of Thrones, before the last season for obvious reasons, and The Boys on Netflix which I highly recommend.
What was your favorite anime?
I feel like, for pure nostalgia, the first thing that comes to mind is Dragon Ball Z. I grew up watching this TV show and Dragon Ball Super. Pretty big on that. In terms of pure quality, Full Metal Alchemist.
Hometown
East Bay Danville, it's 30 minutes east of Berkeley.
Professional experience
I came into Berkeley wanting to be a lawyer because I was a big debate person. I really wanted to keep up with public speaking and continue with debate. But obviously that wasn't realistic. I had come into Berkeley as a math major wanting to do law; realizing I didn't want to do law anymore, I picked up stats, and wanted to be an actuary dealing with risk analysis and such. At the same time, I was also doing data analytics work. I was looking for market research for some financial services company called AssetMark over in the North East Bay Area, I guess. And then after some time I took some CS classes like my sophomore year.
And then I realized being an actuary sounded kind of cool but didn't really require as much CS knowledge that I wanted. So then after that I tried exploring more things, I ended up in the research gig over in Lawrence Livermore National Lab where I was doing applied machine learning, physics research basically. That's sort of when I realized I wanted to do something that had a lot of CS because it seemed pretty fun to me. And to that end I started a job working in software engineering because it just seems like what a lot of people in CS were doing so I did that.
I was interning over at Amazon back in 2019 and it was pretty fun I guess, but I felt like I kind of overcorrected and then I wasn't doing any math anymore. I felt like before, positions I had were all math and not enough CS, and in software it was all CS and not enough math. So I talked to some people who told me my skills would be better suited to quantitative finance. So that's where I'm working right now. I work in quantitative research at a high frequency trading firm called Hudson River Trading, and will be returning there next year full time.
Other campus involvements
When first starting out at Berkeley I did try some clubs at first, but SUSA, now known as SAAS, really stuck out to me. And I've been in SAAS since my sophomore/junior year.
Past committees
I started out in CX, like many other people. Back then CX's main goal was to gather people from external sources/good companies to come in and give speeches. During this period in CX its main focus was expanding one's knowledge and resources, not educating others in different programming topics.
After CX I became the CX director. And afterwards I became an editor for R&P, this was back when R&P first started. R&P now and back then still have pretty similar structures to its production in terms of individualism. It was still a difficult time for people in that committee, though, because not many were motivated to complete their long term projects.
Data Consulting was my next committee, and I was there for around a year. First project we worked on the INFORMS competition. In this competition we were tasked with providing a business solution to a company called General Motors on how to efficiently transport vehicles around. And we used stats and CS algorithmic optimization problem solving. Second semester was more of a classic consulting project where we worked with Taco Bell to predict demand of various stores depending on the time of day. We did time series forecasting, various regression techniques.
I have since then been an advisor for three semesters now and it's been pretty fun. Doing lots of recruiting workshops and class advice.
What was your takeaway from these committees?
My first semester in the CX committee I learned a lot, it was a very informative time for me, from learning to write a resume to learning and understanding stats concepts I was unfamiliar with before. And it was a fun experience learning the applications of math, and how to apply it to statistics and computer science.
I felt like the next year I got a lot of experience in leadership which I kind of had in high school, obviously. But I feel like it was a pretty interesting vibe to like be in a leadership role in a club like SAAS where people are so technically oriented, so it was fun to see what kinds of projects people were pursuing and how best to guide people on those projects, especially when I didn't have as much background.
And Data Consulting is just like that, there's classic takeaways there. I got to learn how to work with real world data, which I had not had that much experience doing prior to, and it was pretty fun working on a team with other like minded intellectuals.
But I'd definitely say my initial years were particularly informative as a CX member and director in the club.
How has SAAS helped you with your career/professional development (e.g. decide on a career path, learning new skills)
SAAS provided me with career and job application experience, resume and professional development experience, and increased exposure to a plethora of jobs and industries in which I could work.
Favorite class
CS 189: Came in with theoretical math, over time I picked up stats and CS. This class was where my interest intersected with the math, stats and CS.
Stat 155: Game theory. Didn't have much CS but in terms of theory it was my favorite, and it covered multiple topics on games which is always fun.
Math 113: Favorite pure math class.
Favorite professor
Josh Hug, CS61B professor. He always really cared about the students and was a very objective teacher. An example would be when some non-native English students had a difficult time understanding some English slang on a test one time and he worked on trying to resolve the problem.
Favorite Berkeley memory
It was my 21st birthday during my senior year. That was a fun time. I was really young too and most of my friends are already 21 by that point. So we just went out and had a really nice dinner first. It was also nice because it was my birthday and I got to be the center of attention. And I go to bring all of my friends that were from very different groups. I bought my friends from SAAS and then my friends from my other friend group from my freshman year, and friends from high school. It was very fun to see those different groups come together and just have a lot of fun. And then obviously the 21st birthday was just very lit generally.
Favorite place to study at on campus
I'm a big Moffitt guy. I would do all nighters and just sleep there a couple days in a row. Sometimes a few of my friends and I would take turns sleeping. Never did get around to trying the sleeping pods though. Always in high demand, and no lights for studying.
In your opinion, prettiest building on campus
Doe and Moffitt library.
Favorite restaurant
Pretty big on Taco Sinaloa. Also have very good memories and it's very close to campus.
Favorite boba shop
I like U-Cha, mostly because of the Bomberman. It's this extremely sugary milk drink. Extremely unhealthy but very tasty.