Hi, my name is Jiaqi Gao! This is how I pronounce it
🔊
. I graduated from Stuyvesant High School with a great depth and breadth of knowledge thanks to the many rigorous and mandatory+important electives like music appreciation and technical drawing (drafting)! I'm now studying public policy and computer science (and by extension, the art of time management™) at the University of Chicago.

I like to cook food that's a little too spicy, go biking+hiking, read novels about resilient characters, and be a part of projects that do social good.

I'm currently doing research on voice cloning over at SAND Lab (Security, Algorithms, Networking and Data) at University of Chicago, which is co-directed by Professor Ben Y. Zhao and Professor Heather Zheng.

I'm currently leading a project for the Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) on improving the reporting system of critical and contagious diseases for public safety with a small team of designers and developers. Our work with the second version of this app, built in React Native, is nearly done! It's done! It's open-source so check it out here! Read about the process of building it on Medium!

I currently lead UChicago TechTeam as a co-chair of the board. We build tech tools for Chicago nonprofits. Learn about how we do it here.

I also lead a team in a student organization on campus called the Phoenix Sustainability Initiative. My team is called Hyde Park Business Partnership, and we actively seek out local cafes and give consultations on how to implement environmentally sustainable practices. I built a client-facing website for this. See it here. If you have any constructive feedback for the website, particularly regarding brand-building, do reach out!

what else do i do:
hire me (résumé, Aug 2020)

你好，我叫高家琪！我是华裔美国人，从小在纽约长大。我从史岱文森高中毕业，正在学计算机科学和公共政策在芝加哥大学。我的爱好包括煮菜、爬山、看恐怖电影。

我正在帮芝加哥公共卫生部设计个关于改进报告的软件。 我们在使用React Native构建我们手机软件的第二个版本。我们差不多完成了! 我们做好了！ 来这看看!
在Medium读我的做这个软件的过程!

有时间的时候，我在学校的图书馆的技术栏， 修复软件/硬件问题。

我有还做什么:
看我的工作经验 (简历, 二月 2020)

several

2018的暑假博客

星期五 09-14



今天是我最后一天在EA当实习生。 我在EA过得很好，有点舍不得走。我最后一天的时间发在完成我的实习项目。虽然我还有很多 还想进步的地方，我对我现在的写好的软件感觉很满意。没想到我能在很多人的面前演示我做的软件。

我在EA见了许多很酷的人，包括我公司里的班组和其他实习生。真的很幸福能遇到那么和善的人–-我已经知道走了以后，我会想念他们。 特别是我交的实习生朋友。如果你们两在读这个。。。也没事；甚至你们找到我的博客，你们也肯定不会读中文。我希望我们能以后再见。

旧金山湾区真是好地方。不知道如果我以后会再住在这里，但是回来是肯定的。

Summer 2018 Blog

Friday Sept 14th!



It's the last day of my internship at EA. I really had a great time here and I'm a bit sad to say that it's over. I was able to quickly wrap up my project and document everything as well as I could in the time remaining. There are many things I wish I could continue working on if I had the time, but there's nothing I regret in terms of how I used my time in the last two weeks. I got to demo my project several times to lots of people (more than I thought), and I actually got the opportunity to practice many times in preparation.

I met lots of cool people at EA, including my team and the other interns. I feel really lucky to have gotten such a friendly and welcoming team at EA. I've never seen a team with such good chemistry as the one I was placed with (where they would actually even hang out outside the company :O ). I'm going to miss a lot of my intern friends as well (see two of them in the above picture). LOL I'd actually be quite embarrassed if either of them see this website. But if they are reading this, definitely know that I think you two are really awesome people and it was great hanging out together (especially *darts* and *the bus*). There are also a lot of other interns who I'm really glad to have met, and I sincerely hope at some point in the future we would meet again!

SF Bay Area has been really nice. It's uncertain when I would come back but I think if I stick with tech (most likely), I'll surely be back. Well that's it for this summer blog--which I've only updated four times haha, but good enough! Thanks for reading.

Sunday August 5th!


Destination: Pacifica State Beach
Mission: See some dogs perform something extraodinary

I've known about the existence of dog surfing for a while, but I've never known how real it is until now. Well, it's kind of actually real. These dogs do indeed go on surfboards with life jackets on and they do ride a small wave into the sand (though, more often than not, crash into the water).
I was really lucky to have a friend who drove us along the west coast of the Bay Area to see some beaches and check out this event. There were so, so many dogs and so much happiness in the air. If I could just bottle some of it up and bring it with me back to UChicago, where it definitely gets eerie and gloomy at times, it would be so very valuable. I'm glad I got the chance to witness dog surfing in person.

Later that evening, I attended a networking event at the California Academy of Sciences for D.E. Shaw & Co. They actually rented out the place for the evening, with museum staff to display exhibits in the rainforest and aquarium part of the museum. It was refreshing to get this new kind of exposure to a company with an educational component, but I'm not too sure what the point of bringing in the stir-fried ice cream stand was.

We got to chat casually with current employees there and I have a few take-aways from the event: D.E. Shaw likes to recruit kind people who like to learn and are very good at \something\. While not all, many of the employees have a PhD in \something\, and the idea is whatever skills helped them become very good at the \something\ can be transferable to the work they will be doing at the company. Seems like they treat their employees very well, but I can't say for sure if they are my ideal kind of company yet.

It was kind of tricky getting home to Atherton from a place so far away, but I managed to combine walking + light rail + uber, to get home safe and sound.

Wednesday July 25th!



I arrive at the Japanese Zen Garden in the Golden Gate Park. Despite overflowing tourists covering each corner of the garden, I find myself in a very peaceful state of zen--perfect for some de-stressing meditation! So calming that I actually in fact take a brief energizing nap with my friend on look out!

Did ya notice it's a Wednesday? Maybe you're wondering how I got out of work :^) I would like to preface that I love work very much so I worked extra on the other weekdays so that I could take a day off to show my elementary school friend, who is visiting me here, all the touristy hot spots.

This is us :)



We began the day pretty early to catch a Caltrain up to San Francisco (4th and King). I brought my [brother's] camera to complete our appearance as tourists and to snap some picturesque shots of SF. Yelp suggested that we stop by at Tacorea to grab some fusion Korean and Mexican food--which we did--and it was delicious. I will say that one burrito is very filling and if you're cautious of falling into a midday food coma, maybe just share one with a friend for a meal? I definitely recommend getting their California burrito.

We ended up taking the light rail and going all the way to the Golden Gate park and explored the rose garden and of course, the Japanese Zen Garden. We actually took a detour after the rose garden; after spotting some wild mushrooms and discovering the scenic woods hidden below the rose garden, we slid down the hill to get to the woods. It was there where we took the nice picture above :)

Monday July 16th!



It's my first time in California. I'm over at Silicon Valley for a summer internship and the weather is ridiculously perfect every day.

Completed off my to-do!:
  • Golden Gate Bridge
  • Fisherman's Wharf, Pier 39
  • Golden Gate Park (Japanese Zen Garden, Rose Garden)
  • Chinatown, Japantown
  • Stanford University
  • The entirety of Menlo Park
  • A quarter of Palo Alto
  • A farmer's market
  • more beaches
  • A dog surfing competition
  • aquarium, rainforest
  • Get dim sum! (@Dragon Beaux)
  • Ambitiously order really spicy ramen that I will quickly regret ordering but then finish all of it (@ Ramen Nagi )
  • Eat something dangerously spicy (@Red Hot Chilli Pepper)