Senior Joins Student Researchers at UCI to Predict Amazon’s Choice for Second Headquarters

Senior Joins Student Researchers at UCI to Predict Amazon’s Choice for Second Headquarters

Wondering where the location of Amazon’s second headquarters should be? Senior Sarah Kim and her fellow student interns at UC Irvine think they know -- they spent part of their summer researching and analyzing the topic.

Kim, along with about 20 other high school and college student researchers, are summer interns at the Program in Corporate Welfare at the UCI School of Social Sciences. Teams of four were created based on personal interests, and that’s how Kim landed on the Amazon project.

“The internship was something that I chose to do because I had always been interested in business and economics, and I thought that this would be the perfect opportunity to know more about this field,” Kim said. “I was actually quite surprised when I started the program because it had mostly college undergraduates as research assistants and I was grateful to be part of a serious project.”

She was selected for the internship after an application process that included submitting her resume and an interview discussing her interest in the program and her academic background.

Her team searched through public records, sorted through databases and input huge amounts of data into spreadsheets to end up with their prediction of what city Amazon will select for its second headquarters: Boston.

“Not only did I learn about going through databases from decades ago, I also learned to be more patient as I dug through sources and found the data that I want for the Amazon project,” Kim said.

The team got through this project fairly quickly in about two weeks and have since moved on to a second, but related, project. They are now trying to see if their prediction model works for major corporations who selected their own second headquarters in the 1970s through 1990s.

“My favorite part of the program was getting close with my teammates and Professor [Amihai] Glazer through donut runs and building new friendships while still being academically challenged,” Kim said.

Kim’s internship continues until the weekend before school starts up again on Monday, Aug. 20.

To read more about this summer program, please click here.


Photo courtesy of UCI: Student researchers, from left, Nicholas Kumamoto, Sonya Kisachi, Avinash Nayak and Sarah Kim.
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