Ahmed Zawad Chowdhury

Ahmed Zawad (Zawad) Chowdhury is a mathematics PhD student at the University of Washington (from 2023), advised by Rekha Thomas and Stefan Steinerberger, working in combinatorics, graph theory, discrete geometry and optimization. He earned an S.B. in Mathematics (minor in Writing and Computer Science) from MIT in 2023 with a 5.0/5.0 GPA, and represented Bangladesh at the International Mathematical Olympiad in 2016, 2017 and 2018, winning gold in 2018. He has research and quantitative-finance internships including a 2022 Quantitative Research Internship at Jump Trading.

Notes8

• Quant employment verification: CONFIRMED - Zawad Chowdhury's own CV states '2022 Quantitative Research Intern at Jump Trading', with bullet points 'Developed execution code for Trading Strategies competition' and 'Implemented new models for price prediction pipeline', and his LinkedIn lists a Quantitative Research Intern role at Jump Trading Group. Jump Trading Group is a real proprietary quantitative trading and market-making firm (not merely a name containing 'quant'), so this is an actual internship at a genuine quant employer. Identity is corroborated by the IMO gold and UW/MIT education on the same CV and profile.Aug 26, 2025
• Identity anchor: Ahmed Zawad Chowdhury represented Bangladesh at IMO 2016, 2017 and 2018, winning gold in 2018 (rank 27, 32 points) and silver in 2017 (rank 64, 23 points) - the 2018 gold was Bangladesh's first-ever IMO gold medal.Jul 2018
• The Jump Trading internship (summer 2022) sat between two mainly academic research stints (ICERM 2021; MIT EvLab 2020-21) and his MIT degree; every role after it is academic or teaching, and he is now in a pure-math PhD - so the quant internship reads as an exploratory detour rather than the start of a finance career.Aug 26, 2025
• Three published/preprint research works: 'Graphical Designs find Combinatorial Structures' (arXiv 2507.13327, 2025, with Steinerberger and Thomas), 'Computing Periodic Points on Veech Surfaces' (Geom. Dedicata 217.4, 2023), and 'Event knowledge in large language models' (Cognitive Science 47.11, 2023, with the EvLab group).Jul 2025
• His published research has moved from flat surfaces / dynamical systems as an undergrad (Veech surfaces, 2021-23) toward spectral graph theory and graphical designs in grad school (two graphical-design preprints, 2025 and 2026) - a clear specialization rather than scattered interests.2026
• His MIT degree is an S.B. in Mathematics with a minor in Writing and Computer Science, GPA 5.0/5.0, 2019-2023 - so the Jump Trading internship fell in the summer after his third undergraduate year.Aug 26, 2025
• Jump Trading internship bullet notes a 'Trading Strategies competition' at the firm, suggesting the role was partly structured as a competitive internship program; still a real internship, not a student camp or insight day.Aug 2022
• His public web footprint is unusually lean for a quant-adjacent candidate: no X/Twitter, no blog, no GitHub activity, no personal socials - his traceable identity is his UW math page, his CV, arXiv, IMO records and Bangladesh press, i.e. academic rather than finance-community.2025
• Deep leadership footprint at MIT: President/Program Director of MIT Educational Studies Program (ESP), President of the MIT Dormitory Council 2022-23, member of the Committee on Curricula (2020-23) and Committee on the Undergraduate Program (2021-23), MIT East Side Festival lead organizer.2023
• Summer@ICERM 2021 (Brown University) computational research program on billiards and flat surfaces; he developed a software package extending Sage's flat-surface library - research, not employment.Jun 2021
• Olympiad service: Deputy Leader of the Bangladesh team at the European Girls' Mathematical Olympiad (2021), and academic coordinator at the Bangladesh Mathematical Olympiad - sustained involvement in math education in Bangladesh.2021
• Bangladesh media (The Daily Star, Prothom Alo, Dhaka Tribune) covered his 2018 IMO gold as the country's first, corroborating that the olympiad identity is the same person who later studied at MIT and UW.Jul 2018