I completed my undergraduate studies at the University of Waterloo, where I earned a Bachelor of Mathematics in Financial Analysis and Risk Management. Prior to beginning my Master’s studies in Electrical and Computer Engineering and joining Kundur Research Group, I worked as a Management Consultant at McKinsey & Company and as an AI Product Manager at a unicorn startup. In these roles, my focus was on helping businesses and organizations capture tangible value from artificial intelligence. Through this industry experience, I quickly realized that AI interpretability is a crucial bottleneck for real-world adoption in corporate environments. This realization drives my current research, which focuses on the application of Explainable AI (XAI) and the definition of new evaluation metrics to facilitate the safe and reliable adoption of AI within critical infrastructures, such as power grids.

Outside of my academic life, I enjoy traveling to new destinations and playing tennis with my partner.

jiakai.tang@mail.utoronto.ca
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