Forbes hires data journalism expert

Forbes managing editor Bruce Upbin sent out the following staff hire announcement on Monday:

We’ve just made an exciting hire in editorial: Frank Bi (rhymes with tee), who’s joining as a news developer to produce highly shareable data journalism with the trove of wealth, sports, college, company and billionaire facts we’ve amassed. He’s eager to learn the Forbes approach from all of you.

As a computer science major at the University of Minnesota, Frank compiled the first comprehensive database of fracking facilities in the state for Minnesota Public Radio, which led him to D.C. and an internship at The Chronicle of Higher Education, where he built the database that feeds the annual Almanac of Higher Education.

For the last year, he’s worked at PBS NewsHour as an interactive developer, where he built shareable interactives around global parenting values and resegregation and wrote stories about autonomous cars.

Frank grew up in the Twin Cities suburbs. He’s big into biking, tech and drones but is an even bigger basketball nut. He manages nine Fansided websites including the one he started obsessing on the Golden Gophers. He swears up and down he will remain a huge Timberwolves fan even if they trade away Kevin Love. I challenge him to make a chart that proves they will be even better without him.

Frank starts Aug. 18 and will move to NYC from Washington, D.C. in September. Any apartment hunting advice is welcome. He’ll be coming around today to say hello to a bunch of people at 60 Fifth.