At night, He Xin set the alarm clock at 6:30 am the next day, ready to go to sleep. He would take the commuter bus at 7 am to Huawei's Songshan Lake Base for work tomorrow.

Working at the Alipay Building of the Ant Group in Hangzhou, Li Qianqian got off duty a little later than usual. Still, she decided to go to the gym to complete the goal for today's exercise.

With different life paths, these two UIC alumni share a mutual label - practitioners at the top companies in the Internet and information and communications industries. Today, let's see how they develop themselves under pressure and through motivation.

He Xin

He Xin graduated in 2017 from UIC's Computer Science and Technology Programme. He then went on to receive a Master's degree in Computer Science from the University of Hong Kong. Currently, he is a product manager of Huawei Vmall.

He Xin

He Xin entered Huawei in 2017. Since attending training as a new employee, he has been doing self-study to cope with the fast pace of work. He Xin claims he knew nothing about the job at the time. Still, his rich experience in PPT making and project conducting at UIC quickly made up for the relevant knowledge. Through unremitting efforts, he finally got the first place in the group assessment.

He Xin first worked as a communications engineer in the network technology department, and later transferred to the e-commerce platform Huawei Vmall as a product manager. He Xin says that UIC emphasizes cooperation and lifelong learning; thus, these skills provided him with a good foundation, allowing him to get quickly started when he comes into contact with different fields.

Currently, as a product manager, He Xin often has to handle projects with a tight schedule and heavy tasks, which sometimes make him feel stressful, but he is willing to take challenges. He Xin explains that when taking over different projects, various planning and thinking are required to figure out the optimal solution through multi-line operations, to accomplish planning optimization, and resource coordination are also needed.

Working overtime is a norm for He Xin, but in his opinion, the most significant pressure is from completing overfulfilling tasks without making mistakes. Undergoing training and through experience, He Xin has improved his planning, communication ability and project management thinking, and has also found the desired direction of his personal development. When working under high pressure, he would recall and miss those tightly-scheduled but happy days in UIC. In his opinion, the overall learning atmosphere of UIC is robust with high learning intensity, which not only lays a knowledge foundation for him but also cultivates his ability to work under pressure.

Li Xixi

Li Xixi graduated in 2016 from UIC's Statistic Programme. She then went on to obtain a Master's degree in Data Science from King's College London in the UK.

Isn't the activity of "Five blessing cards collection" launched by Alipay during the New Year stimulating? Li Xixi a UIC alumna, works as an algorithm engineer at this mobile payment company - the Ant Group.

To enable the audience to better participate in the "Five blessing cards collection" activity, Li Xixi applied machine learning and other technologies to record and analyze user behaviour trajectory, which as a result improved the intelligent information recommendation of new year blessing cards. Faced with the activity with such a wide range of users and short cycle, Li needs to optimize the model in a short time to get the results, but also to ensure that the model is stable and does not cause asset loss. She explains that fortunately, she has a group of reliable teammates from different departments but all with the same goal, therefore, the collective team will solve all the problems.

Li Xixi in UIC at the time of graduation

Coding ability is very crucial for an algorithm engineer, and it requires the mastering of the knowledge, including the implementation of large-scale computing and the optimization of computing performance. This position is not entirely consistent with her undergraduate and postgraduate major, but she believes that the study of statistics in UIC made her better adapt to her work. "UIC's Statistics Programme focuses on practical application, which can help me to define and analyze problems from a practical perspective, and identify the appropriate direction to solve problems, which is also valued by the position of algorithm engineer. I am very grateful to UIC's teachers for introducing us to machine learning when we were still undergraduates, and thus, I am interested in it and embarked on this job.

When the project is urgent, Li has to work overtime on weekends and in evenings. She often thinks of her time in UIC with her teammates, catching the deadline for assignments all night. She says that in UIC, no matter how massive the task is and how tight the time is, there will be partners to spend time working together.

Li Xixi hopes to continue to develop in the direction of data science. To relieve work pressure, she keeps two cats and keeps herself in good condition by exercising.

From MPRO
Editors: Samuel Burgess, Deen He, Zhang Fan, Xia Meng