[Introduction] Chen Lijie, a genius from Tsinghua University's Yao Class, is also joining OpenAI? From now on, he will leave his position as an assistant professor at UC Berkeley and start a new chapter in his life in Silicon Valley. At 16, he won the NOI gold medal and was directly admitted to Tsinghua University's Yao Class; at 18, he won the IOI gold medal with the world's top score.
Just now, news broke that Chen Lijie, a 30-year-old prodigy from the Yao Class, is also joining OpenAI!
Source: XXXXXXXX 😈
According to Top Chinese Community News, this has also been confirmed internally by OpenAI.
This rumor immediately sparked a lot of discussion in the AI and theoretical computing communities.
However, his personal homepage has not been updated yet—Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, UC Berkeley.
He won the NOI gold medal at the age of 16 and was directly admitted to Tsinghua University's Yao Class;
At the age of 18, he won the IOI gold medal with the best score in the world.
In 2017, he entered MIT to pursue his doctorate, studying under Ryan Williams, a leading figure in computational complexity. In the following years, he immediately began to "pile up awards."
Last year, Chen Lijie and his team broke through a 50-year-old "bottleneck" in computational complexity in a paper, using the approach of reverse mathematics to completely overturn people's worldview.
If the rumors come true, Chen Lijie may be one of the most likely candidates to bring a breakthrough to OpenAI's "theoretical ceiling".
A hardcore theoretical computer scientist who has won numerous awards.
Who is Chen Lijie?
A top student in Tsinghua University's Yao Class, a recipient of the Special Scholarship, a PhD from MIT, and a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley.
A simple review of his resume will explain why a "franchise rumor" has sparked such a high level of discussion across the internet.
As early as high school, Chen Lijie had already made a name for himself in the informatics competition circle, demonstrating programming talent and mathematical insight that surpassed his peers.
In the 2012 NOI competition, Chen Lijie stood out with a gold medal, securing his admission to Tsinghua University ahead of schedule.
Then, at the 25th IOI, he won first place in the world with an astonishing score of 569 (out of 600).
He has consistently topped the leaderboards on international programming platforms such as Codeforces and TopCoder, and is revered by competitors both domestically and internationally for his extremely fast problem-solving speed and highly practical approaches.
After being admitted to Tsinghua University through the recommendation program, Chen Lijie obtained his bachelor's degree in the Yao Class of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences, where he studied under Professor Li Jian.
In 2016, he received the Tsinghua University Undergraduate Special Scholarship, and his defense video went viral online.
He then earned his PhD from MIT, where he studied under Ryan Williams.
At that time, his main research areas were " computational complexity theory" and " fine-grained complexity".
In 2019, he won the Best Student Paper Award at two of the top conferences in theoretical computer science (STOC and FOCS).
After graduating with his Ph.D. in 2022, he received the prestigious Miller Fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley, and became a postdoctoral researcher there, with Avishay Tal and Umesh V. Vazirani as his mentors.
He has a broad interest in theoretical computer science, particularly fundamental problems in complexity theory. He is also dedicated to applying ideas from theoretical computer science to other scientific fields, such as quantum physics and AI security.
- How can we make progress on the P vs. NP problem?
- Is randomness indispensable for efficient computation? (i.e., is BPP equal to P ?)
- How does quantum complexity theory help us understand quantum physics ?
- How can we apply the ideas of theoretical computer science to establish theoretical security safeguards for AI systems ?
Scientific research is just one of Chen Lijie's many interests. In an interview at Tsinghua University, he mentioned that if he didn't pursue research in the future, he would become a music game player.
A teenager addicted to the internet taught himself programming and entered Tsinghua University at the age of 18.
Chen Lijie's story had already been widely circulated before.
He was born in 1995 and is from Huzhou, Zhejiang Province. As a child, Chen Lijie's grades were average, except for his slightly better math scores.
When he was in elementary school, his family bought a computer, and after being exposed to computer games, he became an internet addict. At his most addicted, he once stayed in his room for three days and two nights without leaving.
The turning point came in high school. During a computer lab class, the teacher's talk of "computer programming" deeply fascinated him, and he decided to teach himself programming.
From then on, he became obsessed with programming books, and even got up to stay up late to learn programming after his parents went to sleep.
He then started participating in programming competitions and evolved from a novice to a master within two years.
At the age of 16, he won a gold medal at the National Youth Olympic Games and was admitted to Tsinghua University without taking the entrance exam.
However, he did not choose to be admitted to university through the guaranteed admission program, but instead continued his studies in high school. In his senior year of high school, he won a gold medal at the International Olympiad in Informatics with the highest score in the world.
This story of a teenager who suddenly had a breakthrough and turned his life around also shows us that life is a marathon, and we shouldn't draw conclusions about our entire lives based on the wins and losses of one leg of the race.
References:
https://chen-lijie.github.io/
This article is from the WeChat official account "New Intelligence" , edited by Aeneas Peach, and published with authorization from 36Kr.
