Master of Data Analytics graduate Yi Xin is the valedictorian understudy for UNF Class of 2026!
A Master of Data Analytics graduate, Yi Xin is the valedictorian understudy for UNF Class of 2026!
Yi Xin finished with a 4.13 GPA on a 4.3 scale and a place on the President's Academic Distinction List. Yi Xin also led by example beyond the classroom, as part of a four-person, four-country team that won first place at the Mohawk College data competition with an analysis of Hamilton's tree canopy.
“I am very proud to be selected as the valedictorian understudy for the UNF class of 2026,” says Yi. “I arrived at UNF to a room full of people who were just as afraid as I was, and who helped each other anyway. To my classmates, thank you for showing me how to make hard things possible. Congratulations.”
From Beijing, China, Yi earned a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Technology from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications in 2005 and then spent many years building software in China. In January 2025, twenty years after his first degree, he came to Canada to start the Master of Data Analytics at UNF.
In early 2026, Yi and three classmates, Su Myat Aung, Susana Carolina Romero Aparicio and Tessy De los Angeles Ramirez Lopez, won first place at the H.E.A.D. data competition hosted by Mohawk College. They studied 275,156 trees in Hamilton to find out which neighbourhoods would lose their shade first as the climate gets warmer, and Yi wrote the code behind the analysis. Their work was later invited to the CityLAB Winter 2026 Project Showcase.
Yi now hopes to use data and AI to build tools that make everyday work easier.
The UNF 2026 Fall Convocation takes place October 30 – 31 at the Niagara Falls Convention Centre.
For more information about 2026 Fall Convocation, visit the UNF Convocation Hub.
