# Allen Liu

![Allen Liu](/resources/cognition/portraits/allen-liu.webp)

Assistant Professor of CS at NYU Courant | ML Foundations  
NYU Courant Institute School of Mathematics, Computing, and Data Science  
United States

## At Cognition

- Role: Researcher (Research)
- Joined: Jun 2026
- How they joined: Directly
- Before Cognition: Assistant Professor, NYU Courant Institute School of Mathematics, Computing, and Data Science
- Olympiads: IMO gold 2014–2016 (https://www.autumn.ai/resources/olympiads/allen-liu-olp-8d96c8e517a853fda402)
- Overlapped before Cognition with other Cognition people at: MIT TWO (MIT) 2018; Google; MIT (https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/worked-together)

## Identity
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allen-liu-284b28127
- X: @axliu42
- GitHub: https://github.com/aliu42
- Website: https://aliu42.github.io/

## Notes
- Listed among the contributors on Cognition's SWE-1.7 launch post (2026-07-08), roughly four weeks after joining; SWE-1.7 was RL-trained on a Kimi K2.7 base and shipped in Devin Web, Desktop and CLI at 1000 TPS via Cerebras. (https://cognition.com/blog/swe-1-7)
- Cognition publicly announced that Allen joined its research team the week of 2026-06-11 "while continuing as a professor at NYU", so the Cognition role is concurrent with, not a replacement for, his NYU Courant faculty post. (https://x.com/cognition/status/2065200716243702260)
- Cognition's announcement framed the hire around his ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award for work on "learning-theoretic foundations for understanding quantum systems"; colleagues Alex Kaplan replied "Honored to work with you @axliu42!" and Jay Grant "huge win for the research team", identifying two Cognition-side warm contacts. (https://x.com/cognition/status/2065200716243702260)
- PhD (2025) and SM (2022) in CS at MIT advised by Ankur Moitra, BS in Mathematics from MIT (2020); then Miller postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley in fall 2025 hosted by Prasad Raghavendra, and NYU Courant assistant professor from January 2026. (https://aliu42.github.io/)
- Recent LLM theory with Noah Golowich and Abhishek Shetty, e.g. 'Sequences of Logits Reveal the Low Rank Structure of Language Models' (ICLR 2026 oral) and 'Model Stealing for Any Low-Rank Language Model' (STOC 2025, with Moitra). (https://aliu42.github.io/)
- Three-time IMO gold medalist (2014-2016) with a perfect score at IMO 2016, per his CV. (https://aliu42.github.io/CV.pdf)
- His only public X activity about Cognition is reposts of @cognition's SWE-1.7 launch threads (2026-07-08) and the FrontierCode eval launch (2026-06-09); he has not written original posts about working at Cognition. (https://x.com/axliu42/status/2074899911372685338)
- Rohan Choudhury posted "so excited to work with you @axliu42 !!! @cognition", another Cognition research colleague who publicly welcomed him. (https://x.com/rchoudhury997/status/2065208134382305421)
- Core quantum-learning collaboration with Ainesh Bakshi, Ankur Moitra and Ewin Tang produced 'Learning Quantum Hamiltonians at any Temperature in Polynomial Time' (QIP 2024 best student paper, STOC 2024) and 'High-Temperature Gibbs States are Unentangled' (FOCS 2024), both covered by Quanta. (https://aliu42.github.io/)
- Research internships at Google Research NY (2019 hosted by Jon Schneider and Renato Paes Leme; 2020 hosted by Morteza Zadimoghaddam) and Microsoft Research WA (2021, 2022 hosted by Jerry Li); Jerry Li later became a frequent coauthor on quantum learning papers. (https://aliu42.github.io/CV.pdf)
- Before academia he did a trading internship at Jane Street Capital (NY, summer 2017) and a quantitative research internship at D. E. Shaw & Co. (NY, summer 2018). (https://aliu42.github.io/CV.pdf)
- Public headline says "Assistant Professor of CS at NYU Courant | ML Foundations". (https://www.linkedin.com/in/allen-liu-284b28127)
- Competitive programming handle is cliu568 on Codeforces; ICPC teammate Kevin Sun (ksun48) described him as "superstar member of ACM-ICPC team MIT TWO" when announcing a round he co-authored. (https://codeforces.com/blog/ksun48)
- His first original X post (2026-02-05) was "First post on X, excited to share this new work!"; on 2026-02-06 he wrote "I think the last point about the role of theory is really important -- it gives us the right abstractions to lead us toward new discoveries." (https://x.com/axliu42/status/2019906951497609602)
- Funded by an NSF GRFP (2020), Hertz Fellowship (2021) and Citadel GQS PhD Fellowship (2024); Hertz notes he is a native of Rochester, New York, plays soccer and is an expert alpine skier. (https://www.hertzfoundation.org/people/allen-liu/)
- Previous roles include Research Intern at Microsoft; Student Researcher at Google; Research Intern at Google; Quantitative Research Intern at The D. E. Shaw Group; Trading Intern at Jane Street. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/allen-liu-284b28127)
- Education history includes Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Bachelor of Science - BS, Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/allen-liu-284b28127)
- Location is United States. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/allen-liu-284b28127)

## Experience
- Assistant Professor at NYU Courant Institute School of Mathematics, Computing, and Data Science - New York, United States (Jan 2026 - Present)
- Miller postdoctoral fellow at University of California, Berkeley (Jul 2025 - Present)
- Research Intern at Microsoft - Redmond, Washington, United States (Jun 2022 - Aug 2022)
- Student Researcher at Google - Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States (Apr 2020 - Aug 2020)
- Research Intern at Google - New York, New York, United States (Jun 2019 - Aug 2019)
- Quantitative Research Intern at The D. E. Shaw Group - New York, New York, United States (Jun 2018 - Aug 2018)
- Trading Intern at Jane Street - New York, New York, United States (Jun 2017 - Aug 2017)

## Education
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Computer Science - (Sep 2020 - Jun 2025)
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Bachelor of Science - BS, Mathematics - (Jan 2016 - Jan 2020)

## Sources
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/allen-liu-284b28127
- https://x.com/axliu42
- https://x.com/cognition/status/2065200716243702260
- https://x.com/rchoudhury997/status/2065208134382305421
- https://cognition.com/blog/swe-1-7
- https://cphof.org/profile/codeforces:cliu568
- https://codeforces.com/blog/ksun48
- https://aliu42.github.io/CV.pdf
- https://aliu42.github.io/
- https://www.hertzfoundation.org/people/allen-liu/
- https://github.com/aliu42
- https://x.com/axliu42/status/2074899911372685338
- https://x.com/axliu42/status/2019906951497609602


Researched with Autumn (https://www.autumn.ai) from public sources. Updated 2026-11-04. Profile: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/people/allen-liu · Everyone at Cognition: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/people