Balyasny Asset Management has hired the former head of Citadel's data strategies group, adding senior alternative-data expertise as hedge funds continue to expand their use of non-traditional datasets and quantitative research, according to a report by eFinancial Careers.

Halla Yang joined Balyasny this month as a senior quant researcher in Chicago, following eight years at Citadel. He spent five years as co-head and subsequently sole head of the firm's data strategies group, which focused on using alternative rather than conventional market data to support investment decisions.

Citadel's data strategies operation has used artificial intelligence and other analytical techniques to extract investment signals from complex datasets, including satellite imagery and other sources that require substantial processing before they can be incorporated into investment research.

Yang left Citadel in April 2025 and subsequently spent time outside the firm before joining Balyasny. His earlier career included roles as a data scientist at McKinsey, a quantitative researcher at Jump Trading and a vice president at Goldman Sachs.

He is also a grandmaster on Kaggle, the data science and machine learning competition platform, a distinction held by only a few hundred participants globally.