PeopleofSuperintelligence

Lab leader

Roger Jiang

Also known as Xu Jiang, Roger (Xu) Jiang

Roger Jiang is an AI researcher whose work spans language-model alignment and physical AI. He earned an applied physics degree at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, pursued a physics PhD at the University of Maryland, and worked as a software engineer at Mythinc. At OpenAI, he contributed to pre-training, alignment, optimization, and infrastructure for InstructGPT, ChatGPT, and GPT-4. He coauthored the 2021 WebGPT paper and the 2022 InstructGPT paper. Light Origins, the physical-AI company he founded in late 2024, builds foundation models, and he is its founder and CEO as of October 2026.

Now at
Light Origins
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Timeline

  1. 2005–2009

    Applied physics at HUST

    From 2005 to 2009, he earns a BS in Applied Physics at Huazhong University of Science and Technology.

  2. 2010

    Physics PhD at Maryland

    He begins a PhD in Physics at the University of Maryland-College Park in 2010. He holds a PhD in Physics from the university.

  3. July 2013–January 2017

    Software engineer at Mythinc

    From July 2013 to January 2017, he works as a software engineer at Mythinc, Inc.

  4. 2019

    Joining OpenAI

    He joins OpenAI in 2019 and contributes across pre-training, alignment, optimization, and infrastructure for InstructGPT, ChatGPT, and GPT-4.

  5. 2021

    WebGPT co-author

    He coauthors WebGPT in 2021. The team fine-tunes GPT-3 to answer long-form questions with a text-based web-browsing environment and collect references while browsing.

  6. 2022

    InstructGPT co-author

    He coauthors the InstructGPT paper in 2022, which uses human-written demonstrations and rankings of model outputs to fine-tune GPT-3 with reinforcement learning from human feedback.

  7. 2024

    Founding Light Origins

    He founds Light Origins in late 2024, a company building foundation models for physical AI.

  8. As of October 2026

    CEO of Light Origins

    He is the founder and CEO of Light Origins, leading work on foundation models for physical AI. In August 2026, the company closes a Pre-A funding round of several hundred million yuan.

Career

  1. Since 2024Light OriginsFounder, CEO
  2. From 2019OpenAI
  3. 2013–2017Mythinc, Inc.Software engineer

Education

  1. From 2010University of MarylandPhD
  2. 2009Huazhong University of Science and TechnologyBS in Applied Physics

From the biography.

  1. 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.
  2. 22 of 133 people shaping AI with a former OpenAI role now work at AnthropicIncludes OpenAI. 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.
  3. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes OpenAI. 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.
  4. Companies supply the most prior-work hires at 7 of the 9 frontier AI labsIncludes OpenAI. Our estimates of the organizations where 550 people worked directly before joining 9 frontier AI labs across 620 career transitions, comparing the main feeder organizations per lab.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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

  1. Roger (Xu) Jiang amri.ninds.nih.gov. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. About — Light Origins lightorigins.cn. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Staff of the Advanced MRI Section amri.ninds.nih.gov. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Light Origins Closes Pre-A Round of Several Hundred Million Yuan to Build Physical AI Foundation Models, Founded by ChatGPT Core Contributor Roger Jiang lightorigins.cn. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. WebGPT: Browser-assisted question-answering with human feedback arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Training language models to follow instructions with human feedback arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.