Student Profile: Yufei Liu, IPAL'22, MPP Class of 2025

As a senior majoring in finance at the University of International Business and Economics (UIBE) in China, Yufei Liu, MPP Class of 2025, said her interest in the University of Chicago and Peking University International Policy Action Lab (IPAL) had been spurred by several opportunities she had as an undergraduate. "I worked as a
Research Assistant at the National Institution for Finance & Development in Beijing, participated in consumption policy research at the Ministry of Finance of China, and worked in the Investment Research Department at Zizhou Investment Asset Management Limited, and each of those experiences made me want to dig deeper into international policy," Liu said.

"I first learned about IPAL from UIBE alumni who had participated in it," she added, "and the econometrics modeling and R programming components were especially appealing."

However, it was the Capstone Project that really intrigued her. "The fact that the Capstone Project was designed so that we would use the skills we had been developing throughout the program was what convinced me I needed to participate in the program." The Capstone Project Liu subsequently worked on in IPAL studied the impact of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict on energy—and energy consumption data. "I focused my research on the changes in consumption patterns of the United States during the conflict, as well as changes in the Russian economy under sanctions. The IPAL coursework taught us how to vividly present the data with effective data visualization tools, and the Capstone Project emphasized both our analytic skills, such as parsing a group of data by years and presenting the fluctuations, as well as data visualization skills."

Her IPAL experience, Liu said, also gave her the confidence to apply to the Master of Public Policy program at Harris. "The skills I gained at IPAL, specifically R and advanced econometric models, reassured me that Harris would be my best choice to receive formal training in public policy to further improve my analytical capabilities and provide a wealth of academic and industry resources." Liu said she hopes to combine the finance skills she honed as an undergraduate with
policy-related knowledge at Harris—such as the quantitative skills of economics. When asked what she considered the greatest benefit of IPAL, Liu said collaborating with others in a group was invaluable."The happiest thing for me is that I befriended many teaching assistants who are current students at the University of Chicago. Their generous help impressed and moved me, and I look forward to meeting them in person this year."