Jason Qin

Jason Qin is a graduate of the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy. In high school, Jason was active in the math team, where he represented his school and the Chicago area for regional and national competitions and won various honors and awards. He was additionally a selected Semifinalist for the 2023 United States Presidential Scholars Program.

Jason first became involved in research in eighth grade, where he immersed himself in the beautiful mathematical properties of fractals. This research won the Best in Mathematics award at the Illinois Junior Academy of Science State Fair and inspired Jason’s interest to continue conducting research on mathematical fractals using computing and statistical analysis throughout high school. In his junior year, he became involved in a research project to investigate the emerging field of computational imaging and computer vision, guided by faculty in Computer Science at Northwestern University. He also had the opportunity to learn Quantum Software through MIT’s Beaver Works Summer Institute program. In addition to studying qubit behavior and quantum gate logic, he researched and implemented the Variational Quantum Eigensolver in Qiskit and Q# code to solve matrix eigenvalues and calculate the ground state Hamiltonian of test molecules.

A connecting thread for Jason’s high school career was his love for community service. In high school, Jason was an active leader, serving as the Director for school official STEM outreach programs. He also co-founded a platform that provided free weekly math education to students nationwide with limited resources and co-founded a group that taught Python programming for his local community.

In his free time, Jason loves immersing himself in music through piano and cello, folding origami, and experiencing all that nature has to offer. He also served as the captain in his school’s Quiz Bowl team and led the team to various regional and national titles. He was a representative for Team Illinois at the National All-Star Academic Tournament, where the team placed third nationwide in 2023.

Jason is excited to bring his perspectives and experience the beauty of the diverse and passionate Columbia community. At Columbia, he hopes to further his passion of research and hopes to continue bridging his interests in the theoretical and the applied.