About me

Hi! I’m Yuchong. This is my personal website, which mainly presents my academic and technical skills/achievenment. I hope it not only acts as a window for you to know me, but also works as a tape to record my personal development. Seeing this website grow bigger and better, I will know I am on the right track.

My work and study

Currently, I am a full-time applied scientist in Amazon. I deal with tons of customer data for sign-on/sign-up security. Meanwhile, I am a part-time student working towards the Online Master of Science in Computer Science (OMSCS) by Georgia Institute of Technology. Therefore, most contents in this website will focus on areas of data science and computer science.

Being a lifelong learner

I consider myself to be a lifelong learner, and actully, my career, though quite young, has shifted several times.

I grew up with my favorite subject being maths, and I was doing fine with it. I took intenstive training in maths during my high school and won some national or regional maths competitions. Stepping into colledge, I decided to learn something more practical, and chemistry seemed to be the magic wand where you could get something out of nothing, well, if not for breaking bad. I chose polymer materials & engineering as my major only to find that what I learnt during four-year undergradute study was just shallow. With this mindset, I went to Rice University with the pursuit of Ph.D in chemical engineering. Focusing on molecular thermodynamics, I made contributions to this field by developing several models and theories. In the meantime, I got exposed to some data science, as it was becoming more and more popular. Through courses both in campus and online, I accumulated some hands-on experiences and got a few job opportunies. Now working as a full-time data scientist, I feel it necessary to take in some computer science knowledge…

The world is changing and so is one’s mind. I have to admit that, more than pure interest, a lot of times when I try to learn new things, I am motivated by practical reasons, whether it is looking for better job opportunities or fixing home network. Well, no one says a lifelong learner should be pure, like ancient greek philosophers. Learn and get rewarded. If there is fun and good stories along the way, even better. I am this type of lifelong learner.

The other side of me

If I could only choose one favorite activity, the answer is basketball. I enjoy both playing and watching. I even set a goal that for each NBA team, I will visit the city, enter the arena, and watch a live game. This was a distant goal at first, but not anymore. I have finished 24/30 (see my progress) and hope the trip resumes after the pandemic ends.

I used to read a lot, but not so much in recent years. I need to pick up the reading habit. I am also a travel lover. I have been to many beautiful and unique places in the world, and I guess my next destination would be Alaska, Toronto or South America.