Sichen (Shawn) Chao is a recent MIT graduate with degrees in Mathematics and Business Analytics, along with a minor Political Science. He has worked across multiple industries, conducting quantitative research at hedge funds, managing tech product development in healthcare and consumer packaged goods, building software/operations for the space industry, and serving as Chief of Staff at a headhunting tech firm. His research in finance and healthcare has been published in Nature and the Financial Times, and he has presented his operations research (applied mathematics) work at the MIT Sloan Analytics Conference and on CBS Mornings. As a current NSF-funded Science Policy Fellow at the Institute for Defense Analyses, he has worked on AI, climate, and innovation policy research for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

He is a member of the NobleReach Scholars 2025 Cohort in the Artificial Intelligence domain