Curriculum Vitae
Education
Computer Science and Philosophy
University of Oxford, Lady Margaret Hall | Graduated July 2025
First Class Honours, Graduated 4th place in cohort
Notable accomplishments in: Maths for CS and Philosophy (85, ranked 1st), Philosophy of Social Science (75), Algorithms and Data Structures (74), Philosophy of Cognitive Science (72), Data Visualisation (71)
Extracurricular Activities:
Founder of Philosophy discussion society, Secretary for the Philosophy Society and the Turkish society
Relevant Coursework:
Machine Learning, Data Visualisation, Probability, Philosophy of Cognitive Science, Philosophy of Economics, Philosophy of Social Science, Empirical Research Methods (Masters course)
Professional Experience
Research Fellow for Finance
Stanford University Graduate School of Business, Stanford, California | July 2025 – Ongoing
- Currently working for Professor Ilya Strebulaev on a historical investigation of innovation hubs, and for Professor Jonathan Berk about estimating the financial and economic consequences of Climate Change
- Conducted Finance and Economics research with significant autonomy and discretion to lead day-to-day research and investigate topics of interest
- Took a class in Theoretical Statistics and attained an A-, planning to take Econometrics and other core graduate economics courses throughout the year
- Participated in prestigious conferences like SITE 2025 (Stanford Institute for Theoretical Economics) as well as informal student and professor seminars with the chance to contribute to discussions
Economics Research Assistant
University of Oxford and Harvard University, Oxford, UK | July 2024 – January 2025
- Worked as a research assistant for professors David Yang at Harvard and Noam Yuchtmann at Oxford on a paper in international political economy
- Wrote code to automate data collection and processing, saving time for the PhD students I was assisting
- Applied my philosophy skills to uncovering narratives and biases across a wide corpus of articles
- Gained valuable insight into the day-to-day operations of Economics research
Venture Analyst Intern, AI stream
CDL Oxford, Oxford, UK | July 2023 – August 2023
- Worked with AI stream lead to recruit early-stage AI startups to the CDL program
- Conducted business feasibility studies of AI startups by researching their technology's use case, examining their business model and comparing them to others in their field
- Reached out to startup Founders to talk in-depth about the technical details and invite them to the program
- Studied and assessed 50+ AI startups, which gave me the opportunity to improve my research skills and develop a better understanding of the relationship between technology and economics
Software Engineering Intern, Data Science team
WiseTech, Sydney, Australia | February 2022 – August 2022
- Worked as a software engineer intern in the Data Science team where I was tasked with helping the team understand trends behind internal support requests
- Curated and streamlined a large database of internal requests which I used to create 50+ data visualisations breaking down the complex patterns for insightful analysis
- Gained experience working in a professional environment where communication was essential, allowing me to improve and refine my skills at representing and explaining complicated data
Research Intern, Centre for Quantum Software
University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia | December 2020 - January 2021
- Developed and tested various Machine Learning algorithms to be used in a complex simulation of Quantum circuits
- Created a model that could fit the dataset with around 50% more accuracy compared to the previous model
- Refined my ability to bridge different disciplines since the task involved studying both fields separately and bringing them together due to a lack of materials or previous models connecting the two fields at the time
Leadership Experience
Deputy Editor-in-chief of News and Investigations
Cherwell Newspaper, Oxford, UK | September 2023 – June 2024
- Won the Paul McClean Prize for my success in and dedication to Journalism
- Led a team of 8 section editors to report news stories across Oxford for 2 terms
- Kept up with the latest developments in student societies, conducted investigations into university policies and edited 30+ articles from beginner contributors interested in reporting stories, making sure to give them relevant advice
- Maintained and solidified the reputation of the newspaper as the 'paper of record', getting 1000+ page views and 300+ likes on most of our articles
- Developed my leadership skills by managing a large team in a time-constrained environment, and also improved my writing skills such as conciseness, clarity and structure in the process of editing/proofing both mine and others' work
- Written pieces on topics that interest me, such as the Turkish Elections, British Economy, and Philosophy in STEM
Co-organiser and Data Analyst
College Disparities Campaign, Oxford, UK | October 2023 – May 2024
- Co-Organised a student-led campaign to rethink and reform the financial structure of Oxford's college system which notoriously helps the richer colleges while neglecting the poorer ones
- Led a team of 15 students accomplishing diverse tasks from web design and content creation to negotiation with university staff and student outreach
- I was primarily responsible for the Data Analysis and presentation tasks that went into our 90 page report. The detailed findings about inequalities that I unearthed and presented became one of the lightning rods of our campaign
- Our campaign and report was covered by The Times and student press, quickly gaining traction across campus. We're hopeful that our discussions with university officials will lead to long-term reforms
Technical Skills
Programming Languages
Python, R, MATLAB, SQL, C++
Software & Tools
LaTeX, Git, Jupyter, Machine Learning libraries, Data Visualization tools
Statistical Methods
Econometrics, Machine Learning, Data Analysis, Theoretical Statistics
Languages
English (Fluent), Turkish (Native)
Awards & Honors
Paul McClean Prize
Cherwell Newspaper, 2024
Awarded for success in and dedication to Journalism
First Class Honours
University of Oxford, 2025
Graduated 4th place in cohort
Publications & Media Coverage
College Disparities Campaign report covered by The Times and various student publications
Articles published in Cherwell Newspaper on Turkish Elections, British Economy, and Philosophy in STEM
Conference Participation
SITE 2025 (Stanford Institute for Theoretical Economics) - Participant
Various Stanford GSB seminars and professor discussions - Active contributor
References
Varun Kanade
Tutor in Computer Science, University of Oxford
Email: [email protected]