Sophia Wang

Sophia Wang (she/her/hers) is a third-year Public Aairs major and Statistics & Data Science minor from Dayton, Ohio (but has lived in Louisiana, Texas, Wuhan, and now California!). Her research involves achieving a baseline understanding of the relationships between harassment and race on public transit in LA. Sophia plans to map out the unsafe areas using zip code data on ArcGIS overlaid on the LA Metro system map. She wants to contextualize her research under the wave of anti-Asian hate that swept the country post-pandemic and wishes to empower other college students to ride the bus (and change their lives!). When Sophia is not staring at a pretty map, she is leading professional foundation workshops under the Bruin Belles Service Association (@bruinbelles) and planning the next UCLA-wide Poster Day with the Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Research Association (@uirabruins). Sophia hopes to pursue a joint J.D. and Master’s in Urban Planning to eventually focus on establishing safe, equitable, and expansive public transit in the United States.