Ruilin Zhong: Going Far With Interests in Economics and Statistics

02 July 2014 1:23PM

This summer, Ruilin Zhong is finding that her interests in economics and statistics are taking her to very disparate fields of study.

The junior from Beijing, China, is exploring how investment firms use decision science to manage their portfolios of investments. Investment companies make decisions to buy, sell or hold onto financial assets every day -- working to maximize profit and minimize risk to investors. Working with Mike West, professor of statistics and decision sciences, Zhong is applying different statistical models to stock prices and portfolio management scenarios.

She is planning on using it to do a senior thesis. "My focus is mostly going to be used in portfolio decisions and forecasting the movement for foreign currencies and commodities like oil and gold," Zhong said.

But in a second project later in the summer, Zhong will seek to understand how advertising is aimed as a specific group of people. This work, supported by a Davies Fellowship for independent undergraduate economics research, relies heavily on consumer behavior research, psychology and leverages the skills she gained from her statistics and math courses. 

Read the full article on Duke Today.