Biography

Career-wise, I am currently a Senior Consultant working as part of Gap, Inc.'s Product Operations, Advanced Analytics team at its headquarters in beautiful San Francisco, CA. Our team tackles operational problems related to improving the operations of Gap, Inc., leveraging our team's backgrounds in operations research and statistics.

I am a Ph.D. graduate that studied Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at UC Berkeley. My research focus was on alternative approaches to optimization problems involving learning. My dissertation, advised under the guidance of Professor Andrew Lim, was on dynamic Bayesian portfolio optimization models. For more info, head over to my LinkedIn profile!

Prior to arriving in the San Francisco Bay Area, I studied Mathematics at Williams College and wrote my honors thesis on multidimensional continued fractions under Professor Thomas Garrity. Before that, I grew up in Taipei, Taiwan.

Among my interests, as may be evident by the layout of the home page, are photography and music. Photography has been a recent development, mainly a futile attempt to diversify into the realm of visual art, an area where my wife has a significant advantage over me in technique, knowledge and pure talent. That and a love of gadgets.

Music has always had a special place in my heart, from the choir classes in elementary school, to my days in band as a trumpeter and French horn player, to the glorious singer/songwriter days of college. In college, several of my best friends and I started the band Darlingside. Following college, several of us, myself included, had to leave the dream behind and pursue "more important things," i.e., graduate school. The others, however, have resurrected the Darlingside name and are currently taking the United States by storm. Their latest album, Birds Say, has been getting quite a bit of buzz!

Speaking of art forms that I have left behind, one of my favorite random facts about me is that I used to breakdance. In fact, my high school friends, members of the b-boy crew Instant Noodles, have gone on to be nationally famous, appearing on Season 6 of America's Best Dance Crew.

I love the Red Sox, board games + video games, delicious food (anywhere from a Burger Joint cheeseburger to an indulgent dinner at Saison), and exploring places with my wife. If you're interested in getting in touch, shoot me an email at shea[at]sheachen.com.