Zipei Nie

Mathematician working in low-dimensional topology, combinatorics, combinatorial geometry, random matrix theory, algorithms and complexity theory. IMO 2010 gold medalist (China) and three-time Putnam Fellow at MIT; B.S. Mathematics MIT (2011-2015), Ph.D. Mathematics Princeton (2015-2020, advisor Zoltan Szabo). Senior Researcher in Mathematics at Huawei (Shanghai 2020-2021, Paris 2021-2024), briefly an invited researcher at IHES (2023), and since Oct 2024 J. L. Doob Research Assistant Professor at UIUC. Held a quantitative researcher internship at Citadel Securities in 2019.

Notes3

• Quant employment verification: CONFIRMED. Citadel Securities is a market maker / electronic trading firm operating in quantitative finance (systematic trading, market making), so the role qualifies; Zipei Nie held a paid 'Quantitative Researcher Internship' there May-Aug 2019 in Chicago, per his own CV, and the LinkedIn index lists the same Citadel Securities Quantitative Research Intern role for 2019. Identity is anchored by cross-links (personal site zipei-nie.github.io hosting the CV, LinkedIn, MIT/Princeton record). CONFIRMED rests on an actual internship role with a supported identity; no other quant-finance employer appears and the Huawei roles were mathematics research, not trading.Aug 2019
• His public output is entirely mathematical research (low-dimensional topology, data structures, approximation algorithms, automated reasoning); no quant-finance publications, tools or roles appear anywhere except the 2019 internship, suggesting the quant role was a brief departure rather than a career direction.Jan 1, 2025
• CV places the Citadel Securities quant-researcher internship between his MIT B.S. and Princeton Ph.D., making it the only documented quantitative-finance role in his record and distinguishing it from his later academic and Huawei mathematics-research positions.Aug 2019
• Personal site confirms the CV narrative independently: J.L. Doob Research Assistant Professor at UIUC mentored by Jake Rasmussen, previously senior researcher in mathematics at Huawei for over four years, Ph.D. Princeton 2020 under Zoltan Szabo, B.S. MIT 2015.Jan 1, 2025
• CV lists 11 invited talks (IHES-Huawei Workshop 2024, ESA 2024, STOC 2022, FOCS 2022, ETH Zurich 2022-2023, Peking University BICMR 2023, UBC 2020 and others), indicating an active conference/seminar presence concentrated in theoretical computer science and low-dimensional topology, plus peer reviewing for SODA, ICALP, SOSA and STACS.Sep 1, 2024
• Huawei publicly profiled him as a gold medallist mathematician in a company post, and a YouTube video 'The Journey of a Math Lover' features him, consistent with his mathematics-research identity at the company rather than a quant or engineering role.Jan 1, 2021