Dhir Shah

Plate 1 — Dhir Shah

Callsign

DHIR

Origin

Nairobi, Kenya

Base

London, Ontario

Now

MSc Statistics · Western

Support

Western Graduate Research Scholarship

Assist

SS2244 · Statistics for Science

Prior

HBSc Econ & Math · U of T

Instrument

Hindustani classical vocal

Heading

→ PhD, Fin. Econometrics

My first real classroom was a seat on an Emirates 777 to Ahmedabad — a solo flight, a tiny notebook, a moving map. I tracked delay against connection buffer, headwinds against ETA drift, which immigration line moved faster and why. Without the words for it, I was already modeling a noisy system into states, constraints, and choices.

That instinct became a practice — explore, experiment, enact. It was forged the hard way: my first brush with proof-based calculus was a loud signal that curiosity alone wouldn't carry me, so I kept an error log, re-proved theorems from first principles, and stayed through office hours until the notation stopped feeling like rocket science.

Finance was a "no" for a long time — I come from a family of accountants, and the finance I knew was ledgers, not decision-making under uncertainty. Taking real hits on my own investments changed that: the path dependence I lived through wasn't in the textbook, but it was in the data. Prof. Bélisle's Financial Economics was the bridge, and it left me a test I still use — if a non-quant can't act on your analysis, you haven't finished the job.

// I am not applying to check a box. I am chasing the intersections that first came into focus at 35,000 feet.