Biography


Zeyuan on the photo day of MSR AI
@ Microsoft Research Redmond

In elementary school, I luckily designed a dynamic programming algorithm in a contest, before even knowing the word "algorithm." Since then, the idea of pursuing computer science began to form in my mind.

I studied at NFLS, a liberal-arts school majoring in English, and won several math and algorithm prizes. This included becoming World Champion in USACO and earning two Gold Medals in IOI.

Later, I pursued mathematics and physics at Tsinghua University. During this period, I won top prizes in MCM, ACM/ICPC, and Google Codejam. I also began my research career, receiving an ICDM Student Paper Award and a Microsoft Young Fellow Award.

I then enrolled in MIT's graduate program, where I was co-supervised by Prof. Silvio Micali and Prof. Jonathan Kelner. My master's thesis on a new auction theory with player uncertainties appeared in the Econometrica journal. My doctoral thesis focused on new frameworks for optimization algorithms.

Afterward, I joined Princeton and the Institute for Advanced Study as a postdoctoral researcher, working on machine learning and optimization theory with Prof. Elad Hazan, Prof. Avi Wigderson, and a number of talented students.

My full-time job started with five wonderful years at MSR Redmond, where I researched the foundations of deep learning theory by developing mathematical theorems and leveraging hundreds of V100 cards. I am deeply grateful to my manager, Ofer Dekel, for his support during this time.

In 2022, I became a member of the CoreML team at Meta FAIR, where I have been provided with an academic research environment by my manager, Lin Xiao.