PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Goran Žužić

Also known as Goran Zuzic

Goran Žužić is a research scientist at Google Research in Zürich whose work spans theoretical computer science and AI for mathematics. A four-time International Olympiad in Informatics medallist for Croatia, he earned a PhD at Carnegie Mellon under Bernhard Haeupler in 2020, and his dissertation on distributed optimization won the 2021 Principles of Distributed Computing Doctoral Dissertation Award. At Google, he co-led the formalization workstream behind AlphaProof, which reached silver-medal standard at the 2024 International Mathematical Olympiad, and he co-led its auto-formalization research for a Nature paper in 2025. In 2025, he was also a key contributor to the Gemini Deep Think efforts that reached gold-medal level at the IMO and at the ICPC World Finals.

Timeline

  1. 2006–2009

    Four IOI medals for Croatia

    Competing for Croatia at the International Olympiad in Informatics, he wins bronze in 2006, gold in 2007 and 2008, and silver in 2009. His best result is fourth place among 285 contestants in 2007.

  2. August 2020

    A Carnegie Mellon PhD

    After B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees at the University of Zagreb under Mile Šikić, he completes a PhD at Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science under Bernhard Haeupler in August 2020. His dissertation is titled "Towards Universal Optimality in Distributed Optimization."

  3. October 2020

    Adversarial training for AdWords

    With Di Wang, Aranyak Mehta and D. Sivakumar, he studies how machine learning can find algorithms for the AdWords online matching problem, partly during an internship at Google Research in Mountain View. Their October 2020 paper co-trains an algorithm network against an adversarial network, drawing on game theory, adversarial training and GANs.

  4. 2021

    Postdoc at ETH Zurich

    In 2021, he is a postdoc in Mohsen Ghaffari's group at ETH Zurich's Institute of Theoretical Computer Science. His dissertation wins the 2021 Principles of Distributed Computing Doctoral Dissertation Award, sponsored by ACM, PODC and DISC. His work on universal optimality asks how fast a distributed network can solve global problems such as shortest paths and minimum spanning trees.

  5. July 2024

    AlphaProof at IMO 2024

    He co-leads the formalization workstream for Google's IMO effort in July 2024, when AlphaProof and AlphaGeometry 2 solve four of six problems and score 28 points, a silver-medal standard. He also makes key contributions to informal systems such as final answer determination.

  6. July 2025–September 2025

    Gemini Deep Think at IMO and ICPC

    In July 2025, he is among the key contributors to an advanced Gemini Deep Think model that solves five of six IMO 2025 problems, earning 35 of 42 points and a gold-medal score. In September 2025, he is also a key contributor to Gemini 2.5 Deep Think's gold-medal-level result at the ICPC World Finals, where it solves 10 of 12 problems.

  7. November 2025

    AlphaProof in Nature

    In November 2025, he coauthors the Nature paper describing AlphaProof, an AlphaZero-inspired agent from Google DeepMind that learns to find formal proofs through reinforcement learning. He co-leads the project's auto-formalization research with Rishi Mehta and helps curate its informal datasets.

  8. As of October 2026

    Research scientist at Google Research

    By March 2024, he works at Google Research, and he coauthors a STOC 2024 paper on deterministic local routing and scheduling with Bernhard Haeupler, Cliff Stein and others. As of October 2026, he is a research scientist at Google Research in Zürich, working on theoretical computer science and AI for mathematics.

  1. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI from 1961 to 2025, with a year-by-year chart.
  2. The United States employs an estimated 53% of people in our data with a known employment countryOur estimates of where AI careers are concentrated now and how countries’ shares of dated positions changed over time.
  3. 46% of living people in our data with known birth and employment countries work outside their birth countryOur estimate of cross-border careers in AI, from country of birth and the country of each current organization.
  4. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionOur estimates of where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led, from education records in cited biographies.

Sources and credits

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

  1. Goran Žužić – International Olympiad in Informatics – Statistics stats.ioinformatics.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  2. Goran Zuzic goranzuzic.github.io. Checked 19 October 2026.
  3. Goran Zuzic - The Mathematics Genealogy Project genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu. Checked 19 October 2026.
  4. Goran Zuzic honoured with 2021 Dissertation Award inf.ethz.ch. Checked 19 October 2026.
  5. Learning Robust Algorithms for Online Allocation Problems Using Adversarial Training arxiv.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  6. Learning Robust Algorithms for Online Allocation Problems Using Adversarial Training (ar5iv) ar5iv.labs.arxiv.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  7. AI achieves silver-medal standard solving International Mathematical Olympiad problems deepmind.google. Checked 19 October 2026.
  8. Advanced version of Gemini with Deep Think officially achieves gold-medal standard at the International Mathematical Olympiad deepmind.google. Checked 19 October 2026.
  9. Gemini achieves gold-medal level at the International Collegiate Programming Contest World Finals deepmind.google. Checked 19 October 2026.
  10. Olympiad-level formal mathematical reasoning with reinforcement learning nature.com. Checked 19 October 2026.
  11. Polylog-Competitive Deterministic Local Routing and Scheduling arxiv.org. Checked 19 October 2026.