PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Eric Zhao

Eric Zhao is a machine-learning researcher at OpenAI whose work spans multi-distribution learning, calibration, and language-model reasoning. After studying computer science at Caltech in 2018, he won a 2022 NeurIPS Outstanding Paper Award with Nika Haghtalab and Michael Jordan for research on on-demand sampling and published follow-up studies on multi-calibration in 2023 and calibration truthfulness in 2024. Supported by a 2023 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and a 2024 Google PhD Fellowship, he earned his computer-science doctorate at UC Berkeley in 2025 and studied inference-time search and Gemini v1.5 fine-tuning. As a research scientist at OpenAI, he works on large language models and reasoning.

Now at
OpenAI
Badges

Timeline

  1. 2018

    Computer science studies at Caltech

    At Caltech in 2018, Zhao studies computer science as a sophomore and says he hopes his computer science education will help him develop artificial intelligence technology.

  2. 2022

    A NeurIPS paper award

    With Nika Haghtalab and Michael Jordan, he coauthors “On-Demand Sampling: Learning Optimally from Multiple Distributions” in 2022. The work establishes optimal sample complexity and algorithms for multi-distribution learning and wins a 2022 NeurIPS Outstanding Paper Award.

  3. 2023

    An NSF Graduate Research Fellowship

    He receives an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship in 2023.

  4. 2023

    Multi-calibration through game dynamics

    At NeurIPS 2023, he coauthors “A Unifying Perspective on Multi-Calibration: Game Dynamics for Multi-Objective Learning” with Nika Haghtalab and Michael I. Jordan.

  5. 2024

    Google PhD Fellowship and calibration

    In 2024, he receives a Google PhD Fellowship and coauthors the NeurIPS 2024 paper “Truthfulness of Calibration Measures” with Nika Haghtalab, Mingda Qiao, and Kunhe Yang.

  6. 2025

    A Berkeley doctorate in computer science

    He earns a doctorate in computer science from UC Berkeley in 2025, co-advised by Nika Haghtalab and Michael I. Jordan. His September 2025 dissertation, Algorithmic Foundations for Multi-Objective Learning and Decision-Making, examines how multi-task training shapes language-model capabilities.

  7. 2025

    Inference-time search and fine-tuning

    At ICML 2025, Zhao, Pranjal Awasthi, and Sreenivas Gollapudi present “Sample, Scrutinize and Scale: Effective Inference-Time Search by Scaling Verification,” showing that sampling candidate responses and scaling verification lifts Gemini v1.5 Pro reasoning above o1-Preview on benchmarks. For NeurIPS 2025, he, Awasthi, and Nika Haghtalab study fine-tuning the Gemini v1.5 model family across datasets to map knowledge injection.

  8. As of October 2026

    Research scientist at OpenAI

    Following his 2025 doctorate at UC Berkeley, he works at OpenAI as a research scientist focusing on large language models and reasoning.

Career

  1. NowOpenAIResearch scientist

Education

  1. 2025University of California, BerkeleyDoctorate in computer science
  2. California Institute of Technology

From the biography.

  1. 22 of 133 people shaping AI with a former OpenAI role now work at AnthropicIncludes Eric Zhao. 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. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes Eric Zhao. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.
  3. 16% of AI career moves in the 2020s went from a university to a companyIncludes Eric Zhao. 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. Among employers with 30+ full-time cases, OpenAI leads primary technical role H-1B pay at $310,000, and Amazon, Google and Microsoft file 57% of all casesIncludes OpenAI. Across 440,669 certified US H-1B filings from 44 employers (FY2020–FY2026), OpenAI leads primary technical role base pay at $310,000 and xAI leads overall base pay at $290,000.

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 Eric Zhao yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. New Humanities Class Explores the Blurry Line Between Humans and Animals caltech.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  2. NeurIPS 2022 Awards neurips.cc. Checked 22 October 2026.
  3. New & Noteworthy: May 2023 engineering.berkeley.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  4. On-Demand Sampling: Learning Optimally from Multiple Distributions arxiv.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  5. Eric Zhao eric-zhao.com. Checked 22 October 2026.
  6. Papers – Eric Zhao eric-zhao.com. Checked 22 October 2026.
  7. Nika Haghtalab people.eecs.berkeley.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  8. Algorithmic Foundations for Multi-Objective Learning and Decision-Making www2.eecs.berkeley.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  9. ICML Poster Sample, Scrutinize and Scale: Effective Inference-Time Search by Scaling Verification icml.cc. Checked 22 October 2026.
  10. Sample, Scrutinize and Scale: Effective Inference-Time Search by Scaling Verification arxiv.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  11. From Style to Facts: Mapping the Boundaries of Knowledge Injection with Finetuning papers.nips.cc. Checked 22 October 2026.