Mentor: Hajin Kim, Assistant Professor, Law School
Mel Xiao is a Mathematics student at the University of Chicago. Previously, Mel worked as a research intern at the University of Calgary’s Mathematical and Computational Finance Lab, studying the application of stochastic processes to wind derivative pricing. Mel also worked as a research assistant at the Werklund School of Education, contributing to a literature review examining girls’ performance in standardized math testing. Mel is passionate about researching the use of complex models to model real-world problems in the sustainability sector.
As a Polsky Research Fellow, Mel Xiao worked on Hajin Kim’s project looking at how ESG reports changed over time. Xiao’s role included coding tasks such as training LLM models, analyzing large sets of documents, and manually verifying results to ensure accuracy.
“This internship helped deepen my understanding of the field. I found it really interesting how interdisciplinary climate issues can be. For example, the ESG project required knowledge of law, business, data science, and computer science. Overall, this experience reinforced my interest in pursuing an interdisciplinary career focused on climate solutions.”