My initial interest in financial engineering could traces back to themy AI engineering

internship I did at Ant Finance in the summer of 2019. The mainjor project I worked
on participated in was the automatingon othef removing removal of anti- regulatory
comments on the Alipay platform. The LSTM algorithm used in the existing neural
network was not fast enough, so my task was to accelerate the deployment by
designing a new algorithm. Under the direction of my manager, I tried experimented
with the CNN algorithm. Though thise algorithm iwas usually ordinarily used to
process images, I found that it can also beit also suitable for text detection, because as
text can also be treated like images. Through trial and error, I successfully speeded
accelerated up the process by 28% with an accuracy of 94%. Then, to get the new
algorithm approved by management obtain the approval of the new algorithm from
the management, I createdhad to build a visualization method to help those with no
ML background understand the algorithm. After pursuing several approaches using
different Python libraries, I finally achieved a called attention to open the black box
for people with no ML background. I tried several approaches toward the situation
using different libraries in Python and finally achieved a satisfying result. My
visualization received a positive Receiving the positive response from the
management, as I believed they found the visualization quite understandablehelpful.
MyThe algorithm is still being in used in the company’s internal system.

Though Despite I was proud of my performance in algorithm design and

visualization, the most meaningful part of thise internship was its influence on my
career interests. ThroughOften attending several conferences with the sales
department about business strategies in the fintech industry, I realized that the sales
department was the core that generated income for the company. I began to
understand that I was more passionate about managing the front desk to create profit
than I was about working on a compliance team, and believed this pivot would help
meCompared with my position in a compliance team, I was more passionate about
acting as a front desk to create profit and to realize more possibilities in my career.
My major in EE would perfectly support thismy ambition because the majorit
equipped me with solid programming skills that I could be used to model product
pricing or trading strategies. Therefore, I then was determined at that time to enter the
financial industry in the future.

Back atto college, to work towardsstep closer to my goal, I selected took courses
abouont financial engineering, and chose Deep Reinforcement Learning for Financial
Applications as the subject of my graduate undergraduate project. The project’s aim of
the project was to generate a reinforcement learningreinforcement-learning model that
would work generalizes well across different various asset types and markets. My first
step was to construct a simulated financial market as an environment an for the agent
couldto interact with. To accomplish this, I by formulateding the market as a
stochastic dynamical system, and using a Markov decision process. Then I then
implemented a well-rounded selection of baseline static portfolio optimization
strategies to act as the pool of strategies for the agent to allocate betweenwithin, as
well asnd train the learned strategy or model. I also selected aA roster of model-free
actor-critic agents was also selected to represent the Actor-Critic family of agents or
algorithms. In the final result, I found that cumulative return of the strategies learned
was 14%-27% higher than the baseline static optimization strategies, withand the
annualized volatility was 2%-30% lower. Thhise project helped me to establish a
comprehensive understanding enabled me to develop a complete view of the
modeling abilitiesy and performance of the reinforcement learning optimization
agents, and further encouraged me to use fortified my determination in exploiting my
modeling skills to solve financial problems.

After graduating from Imperial College, I was given won the opportunity to intern as
an analyst at Goldman Sachs, Hong Kong, and was responsible for pricing structured
products. The most challenging and fun part of pricing for me was to understand all
the outputs – , including charges, variance, and correlation – , of the internal model
from both a mathematical and financial perspectives. I needed to develop a clear
judgment understanding about of how the market might affect these parameters, so I
could and adjust them parameters accordingly. Moreover, since my assignments came
from different departments, the requests assigned to me varied from different desks, I
was always kept learning ing on the jobnew stuff, engaging in topics likesuch as
historical back testing for risk recycling businesses. Besides theIn addition to
modeling work, I had to generated weekly reports on rivalthe products. of our rivals,
based on which I developed thorough understanding of the competition environment
of the market. The research workCreating these reports helped me build a thorough
understanding of further deepened my insights into the market competition and fueled
encouraged me to develop sound pricing models.

The more I exploredlooked into the real-world financial market in real world, the
more I becamewas motivated to enter the industry. In the future, I would like to work
as a quantitative strategist in salesat sell side, utilizing my mathematics, coding, and
communication skills to price either exotic derivatives, commodities, or structured
products. After three3 to four4 years, I hope to transition to the buyer’s side, aim to go
to the buy side and my ultimate goal is to start my own hedge fund.

WAt present, hile I haveI already gereceived t a the return offer from Goldman Sachs,
but my I still desire is to systematically study financial engineering and work in the
U.S., a more attractive financial environment for me. Therefore, I amsincerely
applying to the Master of Engineering ORIE-Financial Engineering Program at
Cornell University. I find your believe my background and goals are well-suited to
courses like Data Mining and Machine Learning and Demystifying Big Data and
FinTech well fit my background and goal. I am also eager to build a better
understanding of better grasp the financial world through taking courses like
Financial Markets and Institutions and Behavioral Finance. In additionBesides, I am
attracted to this program’s your program has a tight connection with to the financial
industry, enabling students to interact with professionalsactitioners to acquire the
latest information and advice. After graduation, my hope is toI wish I could give back
to the Cornell community as an outstanding alumnus. In summary, I look forward to
becoming a part of your robust community to achieve self-fulfillment.