Annie Zhou

Sandy beaches and ocean breezes were only a few parts of the new and unfamiliar world for an out-of-state student from Colorado. At first, Annie came into UC San Diego with her heart set on one goal: law school. However, after being exposed to several data and research design classes, she realized that her concentration of Data Analytics in the Political Science major was her calling. She was enamored by the intricacies of manipulating data to make informed decisions in both political and technical fields. She began her research journey in the TRELS Summer Research Program at UC San Diego. Led by her faculty mentor Professor Pamela Ban, she was able to produce a successful research project about media bias during the COVID-19 era and presented at a summer conference on campus in 2020.

Later that summer, she entered a competition with a team of students that was focused on COVID-19 and building solutions for border communities. As a data analyst on the team, she focused on making data visualizations for a website that calculated the risk of contracting the virus. The team’s mission was also to make the website accessible to both English and Spanish speakers. Their team placed 2nd in the international competition. After joining an organization on campus, Lumnus Consulting, Annie learned how to utilize data in the real world and help clients make decisions to better their businesses. She was given the opportunity to be the project manager of her team, working with a biomedical technology client. She led the team in interviewing more than 10 medical professionals, and integrated quantitative and qualitative data into the team’s final report. 

After learning programming skills in R and research methods in her classes, she began a Research Assistant position at the USC Security and Political Economy Lab. Here, she learned how to visualize and analyze data at an academically rigorous level and work with a team of skilled, diverse professors and students. 

Annie is now highly motivated to begin a career in data and, using the skills she has learned, to explore a variety of fields, from law to business to political science, to create a lasting and meaningful impact in the years to come.