Hongming Pu

Hongming Pu is a statistician and machine-learning engineer. Born in China, he won a gold medal representing the People's Republic of China at the 55th International Mathematical Olympiad (Cape Town, 2014) while a student at the affiliated high school of Northeast Normal University. He studied Statistics at Peking University (BS, 2014-2018), where he co-authored a NeurIPS 2017 paper on neural-network expressivity under Liwei Wang, then completed a PhD in Statistics at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School (2018-2022) advised by T. Tony Cai, working on transfer learning, causal inference and high-dimensional statistics. He then worked in quantitative research at Citadel Securities (2023-2024) and has since been a Machine Learning Engineer at Meta.

Notes15

• Quant employment verification: CONFIRMED. Wharton statistics professor T. Tony Cai's own research-team page (tony-cai.com/team) lists 'Hongming Pu, Ph.D. Student 2018-22, Citadel' as a past member placement, a primary academic source independent of the LinkedIn index; the LinkedIn index separately lists Quantitative Researcher at Citadel Securities (2023-2024, Chicago) and at Two Sigma (2022, New York). Citadel Securities is an established market maker/quantitative trading firm and Two Sigma an established systematic hedge fund, so both candidate employers genuinely operate in quantitative finance. The Citadel role is corroborated by a non-index source; the Two Sigma entry rests on index data alone and its 2022 span is consistent with a summer internship rather than a full-time role, so it is retained as index-only. Identity is supported: the same Wharton statistics PhD (2018-22, advisor T. Tony Cai) and Peking University statistics BS match the IMO 2014 China gold medalist of the same name.
• Wharton statistics faculty T. Tony Cai's research-team page lists 'Hongming Pu, Ph.D. Student 2018-22. Citadel' — a primary academic source tying the Wharton statistics PhD to a role at Citadel after graduation.
• LinkedIn index lists Quantitative Researcher roles at Citadel Securities (2023-2024, Chicago) and Two Sigma (2022, New York), plus Machine Learning Engineer at Meta (2024-), and education of Wharton PhD Statistics and Peking University BS Statistics. Index-only, not primary-source confirmed for every field.
• Won a gold medal for the People's Republic of China at IMO 2014 (Cape Town), scoring 38/42 (rank 7), per the official IMO team results page.Jul 2014
• Peking University's School of Mathematical Sciences top-program alumni page (2014 cohort / 2018 graduates) lists 浦鸿铭 with placement 宾大沃顿商学院, 统计学 (UPenn Wharton, Statistics), bridging the Chinese name to the Wharton PhD.
• Co-authored 'Estimating Optimal Treatment Rules with an Instrumental Variable: A Partial Identification Learning Approach' in JRSS Series B vol. 83 no. 2 (2021), affiliated to University of Pennsylvania — an academic publication predating his industry roles.Apr 2021
• Chinese olympiad write-ups identify Hongming Pu (浦鸿铭) as an 18-year-old student of the affiliated high school of Northeast Normal University (东北师大附中), matching the IMO 2014 China gold medalist.Jul 2014
• Co-authored the NeurIPS 2017 paper 'The Expressive Power of Neural Networks: A View from the Width' with Zhou Lu, Feicheng Wang, Zhiqiang Hu and Liwei Wang, the arXiv listing showing a Peking University student email ([contact omitted]) - a research project from his undergraduate years.Sep 2017
• Chinese press reports that IMO 2014 gold medalist 浦鸿铭 of 东北师大附中 was admitted to Peking University's mathematics department and received a 50,000 RMB principal's scholarship on admission.2015
• Chinese retrospective articles on the 2014 IMO gold medalists state, citing his LinkedIn, that 浦鸿铭 studied at Peking University 2014-2018 (BS Statistics) then moved to UPenn Wharton for a PhD completed in 2022 - consistent with the index education record, though the articles themselves are secondary aggregation.Jul 2025
• Presented 'Transfer Learning for Functional Mean Estimation: Phase Transition and Adaptive Algorithms' as a contributed-paper co-author at JSM 2024, listed under University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School of Business.Aug 2024
• A 2024 arXiv statistics paper, 'Transfer Learning for Functional Mean Estimation: Phase Transition and Adaptive Algorithms', is co-authored by Tony Cai, Dongwoo Kim and Hongming Pu - research continuing after his PhD.Jan 2024