PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Tengyu Ma

Tengyu Ma is an assistant professor of computer science at Stanford and Chief AI Scientist at MongoDB whose work spans machine learning theory, reinforcement learning and automated theorem proving. He earned a computer science bachelor's degree at Tsinghua in 2012 and completed a Princeton doctorate under Sanjeev Arora by 2018. His work on matrix completion received a NIPS student paper award in 2016, and his dissertation received a 2018 ACM honorable mention. In 2023, he co-founded Voyage AI to build retrieval systems for AI applications; MongoDB acquired the company in February 2025. With Kefan Dong, he coauthored STP in 2025, a theorem prover that learns by proposing conjectures and attempting proofs.

Now at
Stanford University and MongoDB
Works
160
Citations
11,758
h-index
43
Badges

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 28 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 2012

    Computer science at Tsinghua

    He earns a BS in computer science at Tsinghua University in 2012, graduating from the Yao Class.

  2. 2016

    Matrix completion and optimization

    In 2016, he coauthors Matrix Completion has No Spurious Local Minimum with Rong Ge and Jason Lee. The paper proves that all local minima of a commonly used matrix completion objective are global minima and receives the NIPS 2016 Best Student Paper Award.

  3. 2018

    Assistant professor at Stanford

    By 2018, he completes a PhD in computer science at Princeton University under Sanjeev Arora. A September 2018 Stanford report announces his appointment as an assistant professor of Statistics with a joint appointment in Computer Science.

  4. 2018

    An ACM dissertation honour

    His dissertation, Non-convex Optimization for Machine Learning: Design, Analysis, and Understanding, receives an honorable mention for the 2018 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award.

  5. 2020

    Offline reinforcement learning with MOPO

    In 2020, he coauthors MOPO: Model-based Offline Policy Optimization. The method learns policies from previously collected data and penalizes rewards using uncertainty in the learned dynamics.

  6. 2021

    A Sloan Research Fellowship

    He receives a Sloan Research Fellowship in 2021. His research includes deep learning theory, reinforcement learning, representation learning and non-convex optimization.

  7. 2023

    Co-founding Voyage AI

    In 2023, he co-founds Voyage AI to help developers build retrieval systems for AI applications.

  8. February 2025

    Voyage AI joins MongoDB

    MongoDB acquires Voyage AI in February 2025 to integrate its embedding and reranking models with MongoDB's database.

  9. 2025

    The Self-play Theorem Prover

    With Kefan Dong, he coauthors STP: Self-play LLM Theorem Provers with Iterative Conjecturing and Proving at ICML in 2025. The system trains a conjecturer and a prover that supply training signals to each other, and the team evaluates it with Lean and Isabelle.

  10. As of October 2026

    Stanford professor and MongoDB scientist

    As of October 2026, he is an assistant professor of computer science at Stanford University and Chief AI Scientist at MongoDB.

Career

  1. NowMongoDBChief AI Scientist
  2. NowStanford UniversityAssistant Professor of Computer Science
  3. From 2023Voyage AICo-founder
  4. 2017–2019Meta
  5. Stanford UniversityAssistant Professor of Statistics with a joint appointment in Computer Science

Education

  1. 2012Tsinghua UniversityBS in Computer Science
  2. Princeton UniversityPhD in Computer Science

From the biography and OpenAlex affiliations (the years of papers that list the organization), so some years are approximate.

Checked career sources: statistics.stanford.edu, profiles.stanford.edu, cs.stanford.edu.

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 Tengyu Ma yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Computer Science Celebrates Siebel Scholars | CS cs.princeton.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  2. IIIS Alumnus Awarded a 2021 Sloan Research Fellowship-Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences (IIIS) iiis.tsinghua.edu.cn. Checked 27 October 2026.
  3. Matrix Completion has No Spurious Local Minimum papers.nips.cc. Checked 27 October 2026.
  4. Awards neurips.cc. Checked 27 October 2026.
  5. Tengyu Ma appointed Assistant Professor of Statistics | Department of Statistics statistics.stanford.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  6. Tengyu Ma's Profile | Stanford Profiles profiles.stanford.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  7. Tengyu Ma receives honorable mention for ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award | Department of Statistics statistics.stanford.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  8. [2005.13239] MOPO: Model-based Offline Policy Optimization arxiv.org. Checked 27 October 2026.
  9. Stronger Together: Why We Chose to Join MongoDB – Voyage AI blog.voyageai.com. Checked 27 October 2026.
  10. MongoDB Announces Acquisition Of Voyage AI To Enable Organizations To Build Trustworthy AI Applications | MongoDB mongodb.com. Checked 27 October 2026.
  11. STP: Self-play LLM Theorem Provers with Iterative Conjecturing and Proving proceedings.mlr.press. Checked 27 October 2026.
  12. Tengyu Ma | Computer Science cs.stanford.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  13. What Is Agent Memory? A Guide to Enhancing AI Learning and Recall | MongoDB mongodb.com. Checked 27 October 2026.