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Gagik Magakyan

PhD student at MIT; BA Mathematics, University of Cambridge; IMO medalist (2x Silver, 1x Bronze)
Citadel Securities · Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States · academic

Gagik Magakyan is a PhD student in Operations Research at MIT (since Sep 2023, advised by Asuman Ozdaglar and Pablo Parrilo) and holds a BA in Mathematics from Trinity College, University of Cambridge (2019-2022), which he attended on a full scholarship. Representing Armenia, he won medals at the International Mathematical Olympiad in 2017 (Silver), 2018 (Bronze) and 2019 (Silver), and also competed at the IOI in 2018 and 2019. His research spans optimization and machine learning: he co-authored 'General framework for online-to-nonconvex conversion' (arXiv:2411.07061) and 'Collaborative and Efficient Fine-tuning: Leveraging Task Similarity' (ICML 2026). His industry experience is ML/AI research-led — ML engineer intern at RoboK (2020), GNN research at Cambridge (2021), AI residency at X, the moonshot factory (2022-2023), and an AI internship at Microsoft (2025) — before a 2026 Quantitative Research Internship at Citadel Securities. He co-founded Kapan Math Club, which prepares students in Armenia for mathematical olympiads.

Details
LocationCambridge, Massachusetts, United States
UniversityMassachusetts Institute of Technology
PythonPyTorchPyTorch GeometricC++AlgorithmsGraph Neural NetworksReinforcement LearningOptimization
Notes
  • Quant employment verification: CONFIRMED. Gagik Magakyan is listed as a current 'Quantitative Research Intern' at Citadel Securities (Miami, FL, start 2026) on his LinkedIn, corroborated by a The Org department listing placing 'Gagik Magakyan, Quantitative Research Intern' within Citadel Securities' Quantitative Research team. Citadel Securities is a quantitative market maker. This is an actual internship role, not a competition, camp, or insight day. The Org listing is index-only and does NOT independently confirm; the LinkedIn profile (self-authored) is the primary evidence.Sep 2026
  • Employer classification: Citadel Securities is a quantitative market maker, not a generic firm — its own site states it 'provide[s] liquidity' and trades '$800B+ notional a day across 50+ equity and fixed income markets', and was named Risk Awards 'Flow Market Maker of the Year' 8 times (2017-2026). This is a genuine quantitative-finance / market-making employer.Aug 2026
  • Career trajectory is ML/AI research-led up to 2025 (RoboK ML engineer 2020, Cambridge GNN research 2021, Google X AI residency 2022-2023, Microsoft AI intern 2025) before the 2026 Citadel Securities quant research internship — his first publicly shown quantitative-finance role follows a purely AI-research background.Sep 2026
  • Known as 'Gag' Magakyan; personal resume PDF (helped by filename resume_Gagik - Gag Magakyan) lists [contact omitted] and mobile +16505319587 — public contact details the subject published himself.Feb 2025
  • Author on 'General framework for online-to-nonconvex conversion: Schedule-free SGD is also effective for nonconvex optimization' (arXiv:2411.07061) with Kwangjun Ahn and Ashok Cutkosky — optimization research from his MIT period.Nov 2024
  • Co-founded Kapan Math Club (2020) with Garik Avetisyan, Vahe Karagulyan and Lyov Panosyan to prepare students in Armenia for math olympiads; the club lists him among its co-founders and he posted about expanding 'Olympiad Math Clubs in Syunik'.Jul 2024
  • Co-founder of Kapan Math Club: prepares underprivileged students in Armenia for math olympiads; grew from 50 to ~300 students with remote and in-person classes.Jun 2024
  • IMO record from the official IMO site: Silver (2019, UK, rank 65, 28 pts), Bronze (2018, Romania, rank 157, 23 pts), and 2017 (Brazil). Resume self-reports Silver 2017, Silver 2019, Bronze 2018 — matches official medals.Jul 2019
  • Co-author on 'Collaborative and Efficient Fine-tuning: Leveraging Task Similarity' (ICML 2026 poster), presenting at the ICML 2026 poster session per his X post.Jul 2026
  • Also an International Olympiad in Informatics competitor (IOI 2018 Japan, IOI 2019 Iran, participant) per resume; IOI stats page exists with Codeforces handle gag2001.Aug 2019

Competition record

Armenia · IMO

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