# Daniel Chiu

Engineer at Cognition (SWE-grep co-author); ex-Watershed, Kalshi; 2x IOI gold, Harvard ICPC World Finalist  
Cognition  
San Francisco, California, United States

## At Cognition

- Role: Advisor (Advisor)
- Joined: Aug 2025
- How they joined: Directly
- Before Cognition: Product & Engineering, Watershed
- Olympiads: IOI gold 2015, 2016 (https://www.autumn.ai/resources/olympiads/daniel-chiu-olp-e9b14640ec595401aeff)
- Overlapped before Cognition with other Cognition people at: United States of America IOI team 2015 (https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/worked-together)

## Identity
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chiud13
- GitHub: https://github.com/danielchiu
- Domain: cognition.ai

## Notes
- Co-authored Cognition's 'Introducing SWE-grep and SWE-grep-mini: RL for Multi-Turn, Fast Context Retrieval' (2025-10-16) with Ben Pan, Carlo Baronio, Albert Tam, Pietro Marsella, Mokshit Jain, Swyx and Silas Alberti; the models power Windsurf's Fast Context subagent and are cited by later academic work (CodeGrep, ACL REALM 2026). (https://cognition.com/blog/swe-grep)
- Joined Cognition in Aug 2025 in 'Product & Engineering', weeks after Cognition's July 2025 acquisition of Windsurf, and moved to an Advisor role in Dec 2025; his LinkedIn shows no Windsurf/Codeium stint. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/chiud13)
- SWE-grep blog states Windsurf and Devin agent trajectories 'were often spending >60% of their first turn just retrieving context', the latency problem SWE-grep was trained with RL to solve. (https://cognition.com/blog/swe-grep)
- Spent Sep 2020 to Apr 2025 in Product & Engineering at Watershed, the climate/carbon-accounting software company, his longest role (about 4.5 years), joining early in the company's life. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/chiud13)
- Co-author of arXiv paper 'Generalization by Recognizing Confusion' (arXiv:2006.07737, cs.LG) (https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.07737)
- Co-authors on the paper are Franklyn Wang and Scott Duke Kominers. (https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.07737)
- Worked May-Sep 2020 in Product & Engineering at Kalshi, the CFTC-regulated prediction-market exchange, during its pre-launch period. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/chiud13)
- Google Hash Code 2020: rank 7, Team Salmon with ekzhang, turbofreeze2, ultrasonic360, waterfalls, score 4738259. (https://cphof.org/profile/topcoder:waterfalls)
- ICPC 2019 World Finals: rank 26, Harvard University team with Daniel Chiu, Franklyn Wang, Pranay Tankala, score 6/11. (https://cphof.org/profile/topcoder:waterfalls)
- ACM-ICPC 2018 World Finals: rank 26, Harvard University team with Daniel Chiu, Huy Truong Nam Nguyen, Rafail Ketsetsidis, score 6/11. (https://cphof.org/profile/topcoder:waterfalls)
- Won a gold medal at the 2016 International Olympiad in Informatics in Kazan, Russia, alongside gold medalists Lawrence Li and Dhruv Rohatgi and silver medalist Calvin Lee. (https://usaco.org/index.php?page=history)
- IOI 2016: rank 15, gold medal, score 432/600. (https://cphof.org/profile/topcoder:waterfalls)
- Daniel Chiu was selected for outstanding performance on USACO contests throughout the 2015-2016 season to attend the USACO 2016 summer training camp at Clemson University. (https://usaco.org/index.php?page=finalists16)
- Competed at IOI 2016 for United States of America, scoring 432 (72.00%), rank 15/308 absolute (95.45% relative), earning Gold. (https://stats.ioinformatics.org/people/5798)
- Won a gold medal at the 2015 International Olympiad in Informatics in Almaty, Kazakhstan, alongside gold medalists Andrew He (3rd place) and Alexander Wei and silver medalist Demi Guo. (https://usaco.org/index.php?page=history)
- IOI 2015: rank 18, gold medal, score 466.42/600. (https://cphof.org/profile/topcoder:waterfalls)
- The team of 4 students was selected after a multi-stage process that included 4 USA Computing Olympiad (USACO) contests, and the national team selection and training camp. (https://www.oregonlive.com/my-north-of-26/2015/08/daniel_chiu_wins_gold_medal_at.html)
- Competed at IOI 2015 for United States of America, scoring 466.42 (77.74%), rank 18/322 absolute (94.72% relative), earning Gold. (https://stats.ioinformatics.org/people/5798)
- Public headline says "Engineering + more". (https://www.linkedin.com/in/chiud13)
- Codeforces handle 'waterfalls' (organization USACO) holds rank 'international grandmaster' with max rating 2778. (https://codeforces.com/api/user.info?handles=waterfalls)
- LinkedIn post around Watershed's $70M raise ('Accelerating decarbonization with $70M'): "I've been super grateful to work with and learn from this amazing team. Beyond excited to share the next step in our ..." (search snippet). (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/chiud13_accelerating-decarbonization-with-70m-in-activity-6896874772030996480-Sj4q?trk=public_profile_like_view)
- Open-source: the paper code repo for 'Generalization by Recognizing Confusion' (github.com/Tuxianeer/generalizationconfusion) now resolves to github.com/danielchiu/generalizationconfusion, linking his GitHub account to the Harvard paper with Franklyn Wang and Scott Duke Kominers. (https://github.com/Tuxianeer/generalizationconfusion)
- Trading Intern at Jane Street, New York, May-Aug 2019. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/chiud13)
- 2019 ICPC World Finals Harvard team photo (Team 035) shows Pranay Tankala, coach Jelani Nelson, Franklyn Wang and Daniel Chiu. (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ICPC_2019_Team_035_from_Harvard_University.jpg)
- Software engineering internships at Figma (SF, summer 2018), Quora (Mountain View, summer 2017) and Asana (SF, Jan-Apr 2017). (https://www.linkedin.com/in/chiud13)
- Previous roles include Product & Engineering at Cognition; Product & Engineering at Watershed; Product & Engineering at Kalshi; Trading Intern at Jane Street; Software Engineer at Figma; Software Engineer at Quora; Software Engineer at Asana. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/chiud13)
- Education history includes Bachelor of Arts - BA, Computer Science, Harvard University; Catlin Gabel School. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/chiud13)
- Location is San Francisco, California, United States. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/chiud13)

## Experience
- Advisor at Cognition (Dec 2025 - Present)
- Product & Engineering at Cognition (Aug 2025 - Dec 2025)
- Product & Engineering at Watershed (Sep 2020 - Apr 2025)
- Product & Engineering at Kalshi (May 2020 - Sep 2020)
- Trading Intern at Jane Street - New York, New York, United States (May 2019 - Aug 2019)
- Software Engineer at Figma - San Francisco, California, United States (May 2018 - Aug 2018)
- Software Engineer at Quora - Mountain View, California, United States (May 2017 - Aug 2017)
- Software Engineer at Asana - San Francisco, California, United States (Jan 2017 - Apr 2017)

## Education
- Harvard University - Bachelor of Arts - BA, Computer Science
- Catlin Gabel School

## Sources
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/chiud13
- https://cognition.com/blog/swe-grep
- https://cphof.org/profile/topcoder:waterfalls
- https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.07737
- https://www.oregonlive.com/my-north-of-26/2015/08/daniel_chiu_wins_gold_medal_at.html
- https://stealthmodefounders.com/p/9-7-26-top-founders-of-the-week
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/chiud13_accelerating-decarbonization-with-70m-in-activity-6896874772030996480-Sj4q?trk=public_profile_like_view
- https://usaco.org/index.php?page=history
- https://usaco.org/index.php?page=finalists16
- https://stats.ioinformatics.org/people/5798
- https://codeforces.com/api/user.info?handles=waterfalls
- https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ICPC_2019_Team_035_from_Harvard_University.jpg
- https://github.com/Tuxianeer/generalizationconfusion
- https://github.com/danielchiu?tab=repositories


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