PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Jie Fu

Also known as 付杰

Jie Fu is a research scientist at IQuest Research whose AI work spans neural-network design, language models and transformer reasoning. He earned computer-science degrees at the University of Otago and the National University of Singapore, then held postdoctoral roles at Mila under Chris Pal and Yoshua Bengio. His 2021 quaternion paper won an ICLR Outstanding Paper Award; his 2024 language-model paper received NAACL’s Outstanding Paper Award, and another 2024 paper received a NeurIPS Spotlight. A 2025 ACL Oral paper investigates state-tracking circuits inside transformers.

Now at
IQuest Research
Badges

Timeline

  1. July 2011–July 2017

    Degrees at Otago and NUS

    He earns an MSc in computer science at the University of Otago in 2012, then completes a PhD in computer science at the National University of Singapore under Tat-Seng Chua in 2017.

  2. September 2017–February 2022

    Postdoctoral work at Mila

    He holds an IVADO postdoctoral role with the Quebec AI Institute (Mila) and Polytechnique Montreal from September 2017 to December 2020 under Chris Pal. In January 2021, he starts a postdoctoral role at Mila and the University of Montreal under Yoshua Bengio.

  3. 2021

    A quaternion paper wins at ICLR

    In 2021, he coauthors “Beyond Fully-Connected Layers with Quaternions,” which parameterizes hypercomplex multiplications so models learn multiplication rules from data. The paper receives the ICLR Outstanding Paper Award.

  4. 2022

    Running ahead of evolution

    In 2022, “Running ahead of evolution,” an AI-based simulation for predicting future high-risk SARS-CoV-2 variants, is named an ACM Gordon Bell COVID finalist.

  5. February 2022–August 2024

    Research roles at BAAI and HKUST

    He works as a researcher at BAAI on deep learning and large language models from February 2022 to August 2023. From August 2023 to August 2024, he is a visiting scholar at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, also working on deep learning and large language models.

  6. 2024

    Emergent modularity and stacked transformers

    In 2024, he coauthors “Unlocking Emergent Modularity in Large Language Models,” which wins NAACL’s Outstanding Paper Award; its method lets standard language models be fine-tuned as mixture-of-experts counterparts without extra parameters. He also coauthors “Stacking Your Transformers,” which reports faster training, lower loss and stronger results on eight NLP benchmarks.

  7. August 2024–January 2026

    Shanghai AI Lab and state tracking

    He joins Shanghai AI Lab as a research scientist in August 2024, working on safe AI and automated reasoning, and serves as an adjunct assistant professor at Shanghai Innovation Institute from March 2025 to January 2026. His 2025 ACL Oral paper, “Finite State Automata Inside Transformers with Chain-of-Thought,” identifies late-layer MLP neurons as key to tracking world state.

  8. Since January 2026

    Research scientist at IQuest

    He joins IQuest Research as a research scientist in January 2026 and focuses on safe AI.

Career

  1. Since 2026IQuest ResearchResearch Scientist
  2. 2025–2026Shanghai Innovation InstituteAdjunct Assistant Professor
  3. 2024–2026Shanghai Artificial Intelligence LaboratoryResearch Scientist
  4. 2023–2024Hong Kong University of Science and TechnologyVisiting Scholar
  5. 2022–2023Beijing Academy of Artificial IntelligenceResearcher
  6. 2021–2022Université de MontréalPostdoctoral Researcher
  7. 2017–2022MilaPostdoctoral Researcher
  8. 2017–2020Polytechnique MontréalPostdoctoral Researcher

Education

  1. 2017National University of SingaporePhD
  2. 2012University of OtagoMSc

From the biography.

  1. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Jie Fu. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  2. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes Université de Montréal. 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. 20% of people at companies who shape AI also hold a university role, led by Google and Stanford UniversityIncludes Université de Montréal. We estimate that 539 of the 6,766 people with a known current organization (8%) hold both a university role and a company role, including 20% of people at companies and 13% of people at universities.
  4. Universities (31%) and startups and other companies (25%) employ the largest shares of 2020–2026 entrantsIncludes Mila. Among 819 people whose first recorded role started in 2020–2026 and who have a known current organization, 60% work in commercial sectors (25% at startups and other companies, 23% at frontier labs and 13% at big tech, with 9 in two), and 31% work at universities, compared with 66% for earlier entrants.

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 Jie Fu yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Big AI Dream | Jie Fu bigaidream.github.io. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Big AI Dream | Jie Fu bigaidream.github.io. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Beyond Fully-Connected Layers with Quaternions: Parameterization of Hypercomplex Multiplications with $1/n$ Parameters arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. The paper co-authored by Shuai Zhang wins the ICLR 2021 outstanding paper award systems.ethz.ch. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Unlocking Emergent Modularity in Large Language Models - ACL Anthology aclanthology.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Stacking Your Transformers: A Closer Look at Model Growth for Efficient LLM Pre-Training proceedings.neurips.cc. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Finite State Automata Inside Transformers with Chain-of-Thought: A Mechanistic Study on State Tracking - ACL Anthology aclanthology.org. Checked 21 October 2026.