# Yue Chen Li

![Yue Chen Li](/resources/cognition/portraits/yue-li.webp)

Building Devin at Cognition; ex-Transluce, Jane Street, Amazon Automated Reasoning; MIT Math & CS/CogSci; IOI medallist (Singapore)  
Cognition  
San Francisco, California, United States

## At Cognition

- Role: Software Engineer (building Devin) (Engineering)
- Joined: Not public
- How they joined: Directly
- Before Cognition: Research Resident, Transluce
- Overlapped before Cognition with other Cognition people at: Netic; Amazon; MIT; Jane Street (https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/worked-together)

## Identity
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yue-chen-li
- GitHub: https://github.com/l-yc
- Website: https://about.yuechen.li/
- Domain: cognition.com

## Notes
- States on personal site: "I am building Devin at Cognition and previously worked on oversight models for LLMs at Transluce." (https://about.yuechen.li/)
- Current role is Research Resident at Transluce. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yue-chen-li)
- At MIT researched distributed systems (PDOS group at CSAIL), perception (McDermott Lab) and formal verification (PLV group at CSAIL), per personal site links. (https://about.yuechen.li/)
- Past employers listed on personal site: Netic, Jane Street, Amazon Science's Automated Reasoning Group, Genesis Therapeutics, and Gomu (Coinbase Ventures-backed startup). (https://about.yuechen.li/)
- Yue Chen Li is an author of the arXiv paper 'Dafny as Verification-Aware Intermediate Language for Code Generation'. (https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.06283)
- The paper proposes guiding an LLM to first generate an opaque intermediate representation in the verification-aware language Dafny that can be automatically validated against agreed-on specifications, then compiling the correct Dafny program to the target language, with all user-system interactions via natural language and Dafny code never exposed. (https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.06283)
- Yue Chen Li has a contribution at POPL 2025 titled "Dafny as Verification-Aware Intermediate Language for Code Generation". (https://popl25.sigplan.org/profile/yuechenli2)
- Yue Chen Li's majors are Computation and Cognition (Course 6-9) and Mathematics (Course 18). (https://languages.mit.edu/people/yue-chen-li/)
- Was Gomu's first intern (summer 2022) under co-founders Spencer Yang and Kenneth Tiong, building a solo MVP for indexing Solana NFTs while learning Rust from scratch. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/yue-chen-li_internship-blockchain-solana-activity-6959787757984501760-JNGD)
- Yue Chen Li competed for Singapore at IOI 2021, his first time at the IOI. (https://stats.ioinformatics.org/delegations/SGP/2021)
- Yue Chen Li was a member of Singapore's Second Team at IOI 2021. (https://stats.ioinformatics.org/delegations/SGP/2021)
- Yue Chen Li earned a Bronze medal (unofficial) at IOI 2021. (https://stats.ioinformatics.org/delegations/SGP/2021)
- Yue Chen Li's Singapore Second Team teammates at IOI 2021 were James Sng, Lim Rui Yuan, and Yaw Chur Zhe. (https://stats.ioinformatics.org/delegations/SGP/2021)
- Singapore's first team at IOI 2021 consisted of Ashley Aragorn Khoo, Shen Xing Yang, Tan Si Jie, and Tan Yi Kai. (https://stats.ioinformatics.org/delegations/SGP/2021)
- Singapore's leaders at IOI 2021 were Suhendry Effendy and Xing Chen Huang, with deputy leaders Aaron Tan Tuck Choy and Clarence Xuan Da Chew. (https://stats.ioinformatics.org/delegations/SGP/2021)
- Singapore's administration at IOI 2021 included chairman Bernard Cheng Yian Tan, IC members Steven Halim and Sun Teck Tan, ISC member Wei Liang Gan, and ITC member Ranald Yun Shao Lam. (https://stats.ioinformatics.org/delegations/SGP/2021)
- At the 2021 IOI, Yue Chen Li scored 267 points in absolute terms, which was 44.50% relative. (https://stats.ioinformatics.org/people/7588)
- Yue Chen Li's 2021 IOI task scores were 11 on candies, 67 on keys, 55 on parks, 100 on dna, 24 on dungeons, and 10 on registers. (https://stats.ioinformatics.org/people/7588)
- Public headline says "Research @ Transluce | CS, Neuro & Math @ MIT". (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yue-chen-li)
- Yue Chen Li's majors are Computation and Cognition (Course 6-9) and Mathematics (Course 18). (https://languages.mit.edu/people/yue-chen-li/)
- Built Loci (loci.ink), a collaborative online whiteboard; worked on performance engineering in OCaml (Jane Street). (https://about.yuechen.li/)
- I like building cool things at the intersection of artificial intelligence, systems, and programming languages; this comes from the profile summary and preserves the person's own positioning. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yue-chen-li)
- Recurring collaborator Wern Jie Lim co-built Loci (Techblazer Bronze 2021) and the Discord Tofu bot with him, his main pre-MIT building partner. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/yue-chen-li_sgtech-imda-techblazerawards2021-activity-6892765784280563712-F1dv)
- I like building cool things at the intersection of artificial intelligence, systems, and programming languages; this comes from the profile summary and preserves the person's own positioning. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yue-chen-li)
- Yue Chen Li stated that they joined a crew and enjoyed the energy during their first few weeks there. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/yue-chen-li_excited-to-join-the-crew-loving-the-energy-activity-7420587645065670657-HLWR)
- Previous roles include Research Resident at Transluce; Software Engineer at Netic; Software Engineer Intern at Jane Street; Undergraduate Teaching Assistant at MIT EECS; Undergraduate Researcher at MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL); Teacher at MIT International Science & Technology Initiatives (MISTI); Grader at MIT Department of Mathematics; Software Development Engineering Intern at Amazon Web Services (AWS). (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yue-chen-li)
- Yue Chen Li developed Streamline, an AI-powered grading platform, using React, Vite, Convex, and Node.js. (https://about.yuechen.li/library/projects/)
- Yue Chen Li served as the webmaster of MIT's New House Dormitory. (https://about.yuechen.li/library/projects/)
- Yue Chen Li built Notedag, a tree-like Jupyter notebook alternative, with a custom front-end and a Rust backend handling IPC with the Jupyter kernel. (https://about.yuechen.li/library/projects/)
- Yue Chen Li built Deal, a text-based slides tool using markdown/tex, and used it in 2020-2021 for class presentations and Chemistry Olympiad training materials. (https://about.yuechen.li/library/projects/)
- Yue Chen Li built Discord Tofu, a Discord bot in Go, in collaboration with his friend Wern. (https://about.yuechen.li/library/projects/)
- Yue Chen Li built the AppVenture Website, the new website for NUS High's CS Interest Group, using Gridsome. (https://about.yuechen.li/library/projects/)
- Yue Chen Li wrote youtube-pl, a CLI client for YouTube, mostly in Python, and used it actively in 2020 and 2021. (https://about.yuechen.li/library/projects/)
- Yue Chen Li built TLDR, a news reader and summarizer that clusters and summarizes similar articles, as an NLP class project in Python. (https://about.yuechen.li/library/projects/)
- Yue Chen Li's co-authors on the paper are Stefan Zetzsche and Siva Somayyajula. (https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.06283)
- The paper was submitted to arXiv on 10 Jan 2025 and is identified as arXiv:2501.06283 in cs.SE. (https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.06283)
- The paper describes a current prototype and reports its performance on the HumanEval Python code generation benchmarks. (https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.06283)
- The paper is categorized under Software Engineering (cs.SE), Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI), Computation and Language (cs.CL), Logic in Computer Science (cs.LO), and Programming Languages (cs.PL). (https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.06283)
- The paper was submitted to arXiv by Stefan Zetzsche. (https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.06283)
- POPL 2025 was held Sun 19 - Sat 25 January 2025 in Denver, Colorado, United States. (https://popl25.sigplan.org/profile/yuechenli2)
- Yue Chen Li visited Germany in IAP 2025 for MISTI Global Teaching Labs. (https://languages.mit.edu/people/yue-chen-li/)
- Yue Chen Li is affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (https://popl25.sigplan.org/profile/yuechenli2)
- Yue Chen Li was a Student Ambassador for German at MIT. (https://languages.mit.edu/people/yue-chen-li/)
- Yue Chen Li's email is  (https://languages.mit.edu/people/yue-chen-li/)
- Yue Chen Li's class year is 2026. (https://languages.mit.edu/people/yue-chen-li/)
- Yue Chen Li picked up German as a third language before college. (https://languages.mit.edu/people/yue-chen-li/)
- Yue Chen Li's hobbies include breaking, juggling, and playing the drums. (https://languages.mit.edu/people/yue-chen-li/)
- Yue Chen Li's office hours are by appointment. (https://languages.mit.edu/people/yue-chen-li/)
- Co-authored a perception-research abstract with Bryan Medina, Ricardo Godoy and Josh McDermott (MIT McDermott Lab), and an IRC-SET 2020 EEG calibration paper with Kian Ming A. Chai and Vincent Boon Chin Seng during his Singapore research years. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11836244/)
- Yue Chen Li, as part of a team of 2, won the "Best Startup Idea" award from Convex and the Auth Prize (1st place) from Clerk at HackMIT 2024 with Streamline. (https://about.yuechen.li/library/projects/)
- Yue Chen Li developed and deployed the New House Reservations dormitory facilities reservation website in Summer 2024 to replace a subscription-based service. (https://about.yuechen.li/library/projects/)
- Yue Chen Li completed an internship at Gomu.co, ending on the last Friday before the post was published. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/yue-chen-li_internship-blockchain-solana-activity-6959787757984501760-JNGD)
- Yue Chen Li was Gomu's first intern. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/yue-chen-li_internship-blockchain-solana-activity-6959787757984501760-JNGD)
- Spencer Yang and Kenneth Tiong took Yue Chen Li on as Gomu's first intern and entrusted him with creating an MVP for indexing NFTs on the Solana chain solo. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/yue-chen-li_internship-blockchain-solana-activity-6959787757984501760-JNGD)
- Yue Chen Li's internship at Gomu.co lasted 3 months. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/yue-chen-li_internship-blockchain-solana-activity-6959787757984501760-JNGD)
- During the internship, Yue Chen Li picked up Rust from scratch and worked with columnar and experimental databases for the first time. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/yue-chen-li_internship-blockchain-solana-activity-6959787757984501760-JNGD)
- Yue Chen Li worked on tackling massive data volume and SDK changes every other week during the internship. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/yue-chen-li_internship-blockchain-solana-activity-6959787757984501760-JNGD)
- Kenneth Tiong, Zonglu Zhang, and Yang Bin Kwok were mentors to Yue Chen Li at Gomu. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/yue-chen-li_internship-blockchain-solana-activity-6959787757984501760-JNGD)
- Yue Chen Li worked on a whiteboard collaboration web app called Loci. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/yue-chen-li_technology-collaboration-whiteboard-activity-6915607147640754176-vvRg)
- Loci added enhanced PDF import/export, increasing resolution to 16 MP for uploaded images and PDFs and supporting image embedding in whiteboard PDF export. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/yue-chen-li_technology-collaboration-whiteboard-activity-6915607147640754176-vvRg)
- Loci added shape auto-detection and correction, including a specialised shape pen with live preview, supporting straight lines and most standard shapes. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/yue-chen-li_technology-collaboration-whiteboard-activity-6915607147640754176-vvRg)
- Loci began internationalisation by porting the app into more languages popular with its user base. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/yue-chen-li_technology-collaboration-whiteboard-activity-6915607147640754176-vvRg)
- Wern Jie L. worked with Yue Chen Li on Loci. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/yue-chen-li_technology-collaboration-whiteboard-activity-6915607147640754176-vvRg)
- Yue Chen Li and Wern Jie L. won the Bronze Award under the Student Techblazer category of Techblazer Awards 2021 for their product Loci. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/yue-chen-li_sgtech-imda-techblazerawards2021-activity-6892765784280563712-F1dv)
- Loci is a collaborative online whiteboard designed for fast, responsive real-time syncing and compatibility with all platforms via any modern browser. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/yue-chen-li_sgtech-imda-techblazerawards2021-activity-6892765784280563712-F1dv)
- Loci requires no sign-in to get started. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/yue-chen-li_sgtech-imda-techblazerawards2021-activity-6892765784280563712-F1dv)
- A launch of Loci was announced as coming the following month. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/yue-chen-li_sgtech-imda-techblazerawards2021-activity-6892765784280563712-F1dv)
- Techblazer Awards 2021 is Singapore's top award recognising excellence in the development or adoption of tech solutions and is organised by IMDA and SGTech. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/yue-chen-li_sgtech-imda-techblazerawards2021-activity-6892765784280563712-F1dv)
- Yue Chen Li built Loci, an online whiteboard web app, which won Bronze Award in the Student Category of the Singapore Techblazer Awards 2021. (https://about.yuechen.li/library/projects/)
- Yue Chen Li competed as a contestant for Singapore 2 at the 2021 International Olympiad in Informatics. (https://stats.ioinformatics.org/people/7588)
- Yue Chen Li won a Bronze award at the 2021 International Olympiad in Informatics. (https://stats.ioinformatics.org/people/7588)
- Yue Chen Li built Seer, an e-proctoring system using WebRTC, which was a finalist in the Student Category of the Singapore Techblazer Awards 2020. (https://about.yuechen.li/library/projects/)
- Previous roles include Research Resident at Transluce; Software Engineer at Netic; Software Engineer Intern at Jane Street; Undergraduate Teaching Assistant at MIT EECS; Undergraduate Researcher at MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL); Teacher at MIT International Science & Technology Initiatives (MISTI); Grader at MIT Department of Mathematics; Software Development Engineering Intern at Amazon Web Services (AWS). (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yue-chen-li)
- Yue Chen Li developed Streamline, an AI-powered grading platform, using React, Vite, Convex, and Node.js. (https://about.yuechen.li/library/projects/)
- Yue Chen Li served as the webmaster of MIT's New House Dormitory. (https://about.yuechen.li/library/projects/)
- Yue Chen Li built Notedag, a tree-like Jupyter notebook alternative, with a custom front-end and a Rust backend handling IPC with the Jupyter kernel. (https://about.yuechen.li/library/projects/)
- Yue Chen Li built Deal, a text-based slides tool using markdown/tex, and used it in 2020-2021 for class presentations and Chemistry Olympiad training materials. (https://about.yuechen.li/library/projects/)
- Yue Chen Li built Discord Tofu, a Discord bot in Go, in collaboration with his friend Wern. (https://about.yuechen.li/library/projects/)
- Yue Chen Li built the AppVenture Website, the new website for NUS High's CS Interest Group, using Gridsome. (https://about.yuechen.li/library/projects/)
- Yue Chen Li wrote youtube-pl, a CLI client for YouTube, mostly in Python, and used it actively in 2020 and 2021. (https://about.yuechen.li/library/projects/)
- Yue Chen Li built TLDR, a news reader and summarizer that clusters and summarizes similar articles, as an NLP class project in Python. (https://about.yuechen.li/library/projects/)
- Yue Chen Li is affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (https://popl25.sigplan.org/profile/yuechenli2)
- Yue Chen Li was a Student Ambassador for German at MIT. (https://languages.mit.edu/people/yue-chen-li/)
- Yue Chen Li's email is  (https://languages.mit.edu/people/yue-chen-li/)
- Yue Chen Li's class year is 2026. (https://languages.mit.edu/people/yue-chen-li/)
- Yue Chen Li picked up German as a third language before college. (https://languages.mit.edu/people/yue-chen-li/)
- Yue Chen Li's hobbies include breaking, juggling, and playing the drums. (https://languages.mit.edu/people/yue-chen-li/)
- Yue Chen Li's office hours are by appointment. (https://languages.mit.edu/people/yue-chen-li/)
- Hobbies per personal site: breaking (breakdance), juggling with MIT Juggling Club, drums; speaks English, Chinese and some German. (https://about.yuechen.li/)
- Location is San Francisco, California, United States. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yue-chen-li)
- Location is San Francisco, California, United States. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yue-chen-li)

## Experience
- Research Resident at Transluce (Jul 2026 - Present)
- Software Engineer at Netic (Jan 2026 - Jul 2026): Engineer #4 on the Agents & Platform team
Backed 3x by Founders Fund & Greylock, building the AI revenue engine for essential service industries
- Software Engineer Intern at Jane Street (May 2025 - Aug 2025): - Developed LLM/heuristic-based refactor tools and improved domain-specific language to shrink config files by 20%
- Engineered performance-oriented historical marketdata testbed creation and execution tools for strategy backtesting
- Undergraduate Teaching Assistant at MIT EECS (Feb 2025 - May 2025): Held office hours and assisted with designing problem sets for 6.S057 Verified Software Engineering
- Undergraduate Researcher at MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) (Sep 2024 - May 2025): Parallel and Distributed Operating Systems
- Teacher at MIT International Science & Technology Initiatives (MISTI) (Jan 2025 - Jan 2025): - MISTI Global Teaching Labs program that challenges students to bridge cultural and language barriers learn through teaching
- Developed and taught lessons in Computer Science, Mathematics, and Chemistry to students of Graf-Friedrich-Schule Gymnasium
- Grader at MIT Department of Mathematics (Sep 2024 - Dec 2024): Designed rubrics and graded assignments for 18.404 Theory of Computation working with the teaching team
- Software Development Engineering Intern at Amazon Web Services (AWS) (May 2024 - Aug 2024): - Researched and developed automated reasoning-assisted LLM-based code generation systems with applied scientists
- Reviewed and replicated state-of-the-art automated reasoning-assisted code generation literature and benchmarks
- Undergraduate Research Assistant at MIT Brain and Cognitive Sciences (Feb 2024 - Aug 2024): - Researched deep learning models for human auditory memory of natural sounds using PyTorch Lightning in the Laboratory for Computational Audition (McDermott Lab)
- Undergraduate Research Assistant at MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) (Sep 2023 - May 2024): - Researched proving security against leak of secrets via timing-attacks by verifying strong isolation in a hardware system under Prof. Adam Chlipala and Stella Lau
- Developed a symbolic model checker in Coq for the Kôika hardware description language
- Researched Halide-like higher-level scheduling tactics for program optimization in the Verified ATL Framework under Prof. Adam Chlipala and Amanda Liu
- Machine Learning Research Intern at Genesis Therapeutics (Sep 2023 - Dec 2023): Experimented with alternative architectures for Genesis' internal PotentialNet
- Machine Learning Research Intern at Genesis Therapeutics (Jun 2023 - Aug 2023): - Developed a system to fit molecular dynamics forcefields to quantum mechanical model simulations of small molecules
- Proposed experiments, analyzed chemistry data and benchmarks in Python, and presented findings in team meetings
- Optimized the efficiency and enhanced the software architecture of Genesis’ cloud infrastructure code and pipelines
- HKN Honor Society Peer Tutor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Feb 2023 - May 2023): Tutored students 1-to-1 in 
- 6.1210[6.006] Introduction to Algorithms
- 6.1010[6.009] Fundamentals of Programming
- 6.1900[6.0004] Introduction to Low-level Programming in C and Assembly
- Developed and verified a hardware combinational logic circuit specification language operating on bitvectors in Coq
- Implemented a parameterized barrel-shifter circuit generator and compiler optimizations such as constant propagation
- First-Year Trading and Technology Program at Jane Street (Mar 2023 - Mar 2023)
- HKN Honor Society Peer Tutor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Sep 2022 - Dec 2022): Tutored students 1-to-1 in 6.1220[6.046] Design and Analysis of Algorithms, MIT's capstone undergraduate algorithms class
- Blockchain Development Intern at Gomu.co (May 2022 - Jul 2022): - Developed an MVP with >2TB of data for indexing NFTs on the Solana blockchain solo using Rust, columnar databases & cloud services
- Created an alpha Solana endpoint with >10000 NFTs supporting collections such as Okay Bears for the Gomu API, which was presented to potential customers
- Contributed to the design and development of general data ingestion frameworks for the Gomu tech stack
- Worked with cloud platforms for storage and monitoring
- Research Intern at DSO National Laboratories (Jul 2019 - Dec 2019): Researched on "Incorporating Dilemma Reasoning into Modern SAT Solvers" under the guidance of Dr Kian Ming Adam Chai
- Member of Technical Staff (building Devin) at Cognition

## Education
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Bachelor of Science - BS, Mathematics, Computation and Cognition - (Sep 2022 - Dec 2025)
- National University of Singapore - Non-Graduating Programme - (Jan 2020 - May 2021)

## Sources
- https://about.yuechen.li/
- https://linkedin.com/in/yue-chen-li
- https://stats.ioinformatics.org/people/7588
- https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.06283
- https://adam.chlipala.net/past
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/yue-chen-li_ioi-medalist-knife-juggler-breakdancer-activity-7420587645065670657-Xi1B
- https://popl25.sigplan.org/profile/yuechenli2
- https://languages.mit.edu/people/yue-chen-li/
- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11836244/
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/yue-chen-li_internship-blockchain-solana-activity-6959787757984501760-JNGD
- https://about.yuechen.li/library/projects/
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/yue-chen-li_sgtech-imda-techblazerawards2021-activity-6892765784280563712-F1dv
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/yue-chen-li_technology-collaboration-whiteboard-activity-6915607147640754176-vvRg
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/yue-chen-li_excited-to-join-the-crew-loving-the-energy-activity-7420587645065670657-HLWR
- https://stats.ioinformatics.org/delegations/SGP/2021
- https://github.com/l-yc
- https://codeforces.com/blog/entry/90291
- https://olympiadsguru.wordpress.com/2021/06/27/singapore-ioi-2021-team-results/
- https://www.linkedin.com/company/netic-ai/posts
- https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=k_fF0LcAAAAJ&hl=en
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/yue-chen-li


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