# Chon Hou Ye

MIT Math+CS | ex-Windsurf (now Cognition) engineer | Mantis @ MIT CompBio | IMO silver, IOI bronze (Macau)  
Massachusetts Institute of Technology  
Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States

## At Cognition

- Role: Former Engineer (Engineering)
- Joined: Jun 2025
- How they joined: With Windsurf (https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/acquisitions/windsurf)
- Before Windsurf: Core Engineer, Researcher @ Mantis, MIT Computational Biology Group, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Now: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jophy-ye)
- Olympiads: IMO silver 2023, bronze 2022; IOI bronze 2022, 2023 (https://www.autumn.ai/resources/olympiads/chon-hou-ye-olp-ca5ba60d4c195c4eb2c6)
- Overlapped before Cognition with other Cognition people at: Codeium (Windsurf); MIT (https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/worked-together)

## Identity
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jophy-ye
- GitHub: https://github.com/jophy-ye
- Domain: mit.edu

## Notes
- Software Engineer at Windsurf (Mountain View) Jun-Aug 2025, the summer Google hired Windsurf's founders and Cognition acquired the rest of the company (July 2025). He was there during the handover, which is how he came to Cognition; his public LinkedIn still lists the role as a Windsurf internship. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jophy-ye)
- Core Engineer and Researcher on Mantis at the MIT Computational Biology Group (Manolis Kellis's lab) since Jun 2024. Mantis uses LLMs to ingest and embed unstructured datasets and shows the latent space as an interactive map; it had about 50 beta users. He also led an engineering sub-team on data-science toolset integration and worked on retrieval-augmented agents with chain-of-thought. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jophy-ye)
- IOI for Macao: 2022 bronze (251.5/600, rank 94) and 2023 bronze (209.5/600, rank 107). His 2023 Macau IOI teammates were Chi Ho Zheng, Io Fai Lei and Pok Hong Lam. (https://cphof.org/profile/ioi:7819)
- IMO for Macau three years running: 2021 honourable mention (8 pts, rank 348), 2022 bronze (28 pts, rank 146), 2023 silver (25 pts, rank 137/618). (https://moresults.org/contestants/chy-4)
- Medalled at both the IMO and the IOI in 2022 and 2023, which is rare for a small delegation like Macau's. (https://cphof.org/profile/ioi:7819)
- Open source: GitHub jophy-ye ('Jophy Chon Hou Ye', 21 followers, 15 public repos). Original repos: super-weight-67960-final-proj (MIT 6.7960 study of super weights in large models, Dec 2025), PLC-project, EMG-Classification-6.S052, mit-bc24, m51-databot, Vex5868C2019. He has forks of django, djangoproject.com, channels, next-auth, FlexLayout, eslint-plugin-zustand-rules, MIT's hydrant course planner and 'An Infinitely Large Napkin'. (https://github.com/jophy-ye)
- Published 'Multiplicative Weights: An Elegant Application to Maximum Flow' in the Columbia Journal of Undergraduate Mathematics, Vol. 2 No. 2 (2025), credited as Chon Hou (Jophy) Ye. (https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/cjum/article/download/14294/7840/40894)
- Summer 2024 UROP with the MIT Computational Design and Fabrication Group under Prof. Wojciech Matusik, supervised by Michael Sun. He researched formal graph methods for training models on scarce data and built a dataset for industrial PLC code optimization with a Fortune-500 partner (GitHub repo jophy-ye/PLC-project). (https://github.com/jophy-ye/PLC-project)
- A June 2025 post by Manolis Kellis promoted a July 6 Athens AI hackathon run with SundAI Club, presented Mantis ('WhatIsMantis') as a cognitive workbench, and named the Mantis team. (https://x.com/manoliskellis/status/1937752301399048565)
- Named in the Putnam Competition winners announcements for 2023 and 2025 (the 2023 announcement also notes MIT's first-place team). (https://kskedlaya.org/putnam-archive/AnnouncementOfWinners2025.pdf)
- IMO Macau teammates: in 2022 Cheng In Cheung, Wang Iok Lin, Kuok Wai U, Chi Pang Lao and Siyang Lin; in 2023 Wai Chong Chan, Wang Iok Lin, Kuok Wai U, Chong Un Un, Ngou Hin Cheang and Song Pok Hong (per extraction from imo-official Macau results). (https://www.imo-official.org/results/individual/country/MAC/)
- MIT, Bachelor's in Mathematics and Computer Science (double major), 2022-2026. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jophy-ye)
- Forks of django/channels/next-auth/FlexLayout/zustand ESLint rules (late 2024 to early 2025) match the Mantis web stack (Django backend, React/Next frontend). (https://github.com/jophy-ye)

## Experience
- Core Engineer, Researcher @ Mantis, MIT Computational Biology Group at Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States (Jun 2024 - Present): - Co-build Mantis which ingest & embed unstructured dataset with LLM, and visualise the
latent space on an interactive map, to empower responsive interpretation of high-dimensional
data, currently with 50 beta users.
- Integrate retrieval-augmented agents with chain-of-thought analysis to enhance LLM’s reasoning capabilities.
- Lead engineering sub-team on data science toolset integration and reviewed code to minimise adaptation cost.
- Undergraduate Researcher @ MIT Computational Design and Fabrication Group at Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States (Jun 2024 - Sep 2024): - Researched on formal graph methods to optimize model training in domains with scarce data.
- Composed dataset to apply the method to industrial PLC code optimization, collaborating with fortune-500 firm.
- Software Engineer at Windsurf - Mountain View, California, United States (Jun 2025 - Aug 2025)

## Education
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Bachelor's degree, Mathematics and Computer Science (double major) - (Sep 2022 - Jun 2026): * Related Coursework: Advanced Algorithms, Applied Machine Learning, Efficient ML, etc. Academic
* Interest: Artificial Intelligence, Discrete Mathematics, Theoretical Computer Science

## Sources
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/jophy-ye
- https://moresults.org/contestants/chy-4
- https://cphof.org/profile/ioi:7819
- https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/cjum/article/download/14294/7840/40894
- https://www.scribd.com/document/724925264/7b2939aacd4dc6c0483648df40171f7f2eaf32
- https://kostka.dev/ioi/23/
- https://www.yau-awards.com/uploads/file/20211104/20211104103659_17902.pdf
- https://x.com/manoliskellis/status/1937752301399048565
- https://stats.ioinformatics.org/people/7819
- https://www.imo-official.org/results/individual/country/MAC/
- http://www.embarkchina.org/50782
- https://github.com/jophy-ye
- https://api.github.com/users/jophy-ye/repos?per_page=100&sort=pushed
- https://kskedlaya.org/putnam-archive/AnnouncementOfWinners2025.pdf
- https://github.com/jophy-ye/PLC-project


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