PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Aston Zhang

Aston Zhang is an AI researcher whose work spans neural network architecture, language model reasoning, and deep learning education. He earned master's degrees in statistics and computer science at UIUC in 2015 and was a computer science PhD candidate there in 2016, where Carl Gunter and Jiawei Han supervised his research on data mining, machine learning, and privacy. He received the ACM UbiComp Distinguished Paper Award in 2018 and presented an Amazon AI tutorial at KDD in 2019. In 2020, he coauthored Dive into Deep Learning; his quaternion paper won ICLR's 2021 Outstanding Paper Award, and Cambridge University Press published the book edition in 2023. In 2023, he coauthored an ICLR paper on automatic chain-of-thought prompting and became a core contributor to The Llama 3 Herd of Models in 2024; he works at OpenAI on pre-training and model architecture, contributing to its flagship GPT models.

Now at
OpenAI
Badges

Timeline

  1. 2015–2016

    Graduate study at Illinois

    In 2015, he earns M.S. degrees in statistics and computer science at UIUC. In 2016, he is a computer science Ph.D. candidate there, where Carl A. Gunter and Jiawei Han supervise his research on data mining, machine learning, and privacy.

  2. 2018

    An ACM UbiComp award

    In 2018, he receives the ACM UbiComp Distinguished Paper Award.

  3. 2019

    A KDD language tutorial

    At KDD in 2019, he presents From Shallow to Deep Language Representations: Pre-training, Fine-tuning, and Beyond with Amazon AI colleagues.

  4. 2020–2023

    Dive into Deep Learning

    In 2020, he is an AWS senior applied scientist and coauthors Dive into Deep Learning, an open source book with text, mathematics, and runnable code. Cambridge University Press publishes its edition in 2023 with Zachary C. Lipton, Mu Li, and Alexander J. Smola.

  5. 2021

    An ICLR paper award

    In 2021, he coauthors Beyond Fully-Connected Layers with Quaternions: Parameterization of Hypercomplex Multiplications with 1/n Parameters with six researchers. The paper earns the ICLR Outstanding Paper Award.

  6. 2023

    Automatic chain-of-thought prompting

    In 2023, he coauthors Automatic Chain of Thought Prompting in Large Language Models with Zhuosheng Zhang, Mu Li, and Alex Smola at ICLR. Auto-CoT samples diverse questions and generates reasoning chains for demonstrations.

  7. 2024

    Core contributor to Llama 3

    In 2024, he is a core contributor to the Llama Team, AI@Meta, and coauthors The Llama 3 Herd of Models.

  8. As of October 2026

    Pre-training at OpenAI

    As of October 2026, he works on pre-training and model architecture at OpenAI, contributes to GPT-5.x and GPT-6.x flagship models, and leads GPT-5.4 Nano.

Career

  1. NowOpenAI
  2. From 2024MetaCore Contributor
  3. From 2020AmazonSenior Applied Scientist

Education

  1. From 2016University of Illinois Urbana-ChampaignPhD
  2. 2015University of Illinois Urbana-ChampaignM.S. degrees in statistics and computer science

From the biography.

  1. 22 of 133 people shaping AI with a former OpenAI role now work at AnthropicIncludes Aston Zhang. Our estimates of where OpenAI recruits came from and where 133 people with former OpenAI roles work now, including the companies and labs they founded.
  2. Google alumni have founded or led 133 other organizations, more than any other AI labIncludes Aston Zhang. We estimate that alumni of 17 major AI labs went on to found or lead 350 other organizations, including 226 they founded, and we trace 472 career moves directly between 23 labs since 2010.
  3. 16% of AI career moves in the 2020s went from a university to a companyIncludes Aston Zhang. We estimate that 16% of AI career moves in the 2020s went from a university to a company; 29% of moves starting at a university went to a company, and 76% ended the university role.
  4. Language models reach 33% of 2020s entrants, and company shares run from 8% in pattern recognition to 91% in AI infrastructureIncludes Aston Zhang. We estimate how research topics in AI changed across seven entry decades (6,853 people from the 1960s to the 2020s) and how 60 major topics split between companies (8% to 91%) and universities (10% to 93%).

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Aston Zhang yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Past DAIS Seminars | Data and Intelligent Systems | Illinois dais.cs.illinois.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Aston Zhang | KI-Campus ki-campus.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. KDD 2019 | Hands On Tutorials kdd.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Amazon scientists author popular deep-learning book - Amazon Science amazon.science. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Dive into Deep Learning — Dive into Deep Learning 1.0.3 documentation d2l.ai. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Dive Into Deep Learning - Aston Zhang, Zachary C. Lipton, Mu Li (Computer scientist), Alexander J. Smola - Google Books books.google.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. AWS scientist wins ICLR outstanding paper award - Amazon Science amazon.science. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. Automatic Chain of Thought Prompting in Large Language Models | ML Anthology mlanthology.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. Papers – Aston Zhang astonzhang.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  10. The Llama 3 Herd of Models arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  11. Aston Zhang astonzhang.com. Checked 21 October 2026.