PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Zhen Wang

Also known as Wang Zhen

Zhen Wang is a professor at Northwestern Polytechnical University whose research on evolutionary games, networks and multi-agent systems examines how cooperation arises among humans and AI agents. After serving as a JSPS senior researcher at Kyushu University from 2014 to 2016, he joined Northwestern Polytechnical as a professor in December 2016, and MIT Technology Review named him to its 2017 Innovators Under 35 list for China. His papers include a 2015 study of universal scaling for the dilemma strength in evolutionary games, behavioral experiments on human cooperation published in 2017 and 2018, and 2022 and 2023 conference papers on the learning dynamics of agent populations. Academia Europaea elected him in 2019, he became an IEEE Fellow in 2023, and the International Association for Pattern Recognition named him a Fellow in 2024 for contributions to behavior patterns of AI agents and humans. In 2026, he received the Tan Kah Kee Young Scientist Award in Information Technical Sciences for work at the intersection of game theory and artificial intelligence.

Timeline

  1. 2014–2016

    Researcher at Kyushu University

    From 2014 to 2016, he is a JSPS senior researcher at Kyushu University in Japan. In 2015, he and coauthors publish “Universal scaling for the dilemma strength in evolutionary games” in Physics of Life Reviews, a paper that transforms diverse evolutionary games into a unified geometry of conflict and cooperation.

  2. 2016–2017

    Joining Northwestern Polytechnical University

    He becomes a professor at Northwestern Polytechnical University in December 2016. In 2017, he takes an honorary professorship at the Complex Systems Center Maribor of the University of Maribor in Slovenia, and MIT Technology Review names him to its Innovators Under 35 list for China for his network science work on multilayer coupled networks.

  3. 2017–2018

    Human cooperation experiments

    In 2017, he and coauthors publish “Onymity promotes cooperation in social dilemma experiments” in Science Advances. In 2018, he is first author of a Nature Communications experiment in which human volunteers playing a repeated prisoner’s dilemma cooperate more when a decoy option is added.

  4. 2019–2020

    Elected to Academia Europaea

    In 2019, he is elected to Academia Europaea. In 2020, he is elected a member of the National Natural Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars and of the Global Young Academy, where he serves until 2025.

  5. 2022–2023

    Regret minimization in agent populations

    In 2022, he presents a master-equation model of regret minimization in large agent populations at IJCAI, written with Chunjiang Mu, Shuyue Hu, Chen Chu and Xuelong Li. In 2023, he publishes two AAAI papers: one on the emergence of punishment in social dilemmas with environmental feedback, and one with Chen Chu and others on a pair-approximation method for the dynamics of multi-agent stochastic games.

  6. 2023–2024

    IEEE and IAPR fellowships

    He becomes an IEEE Fellow in 2023. In 2024, the International Association for Pattern Recognition names him a Fellow for contributions to behavior patterns of AI agents and humans, as well as their applications.

  7. 2025–2026

    Tan Kah Kee Young Scientist Award

    In 2025, his team at the School of Cyberspace Security publishes “Social networking agency and prosociality are inextricably linked in economic games” in Nature Human Behaviour; participants given greater network agency show more prosocial behavior in prisoner’s dilemma, trust and ultimatum games. In 2026, he receives the Tan Kah Kee Young Scientist Award in Information Technical Sciences for work at the intersection of game theory and artificial intelligence, and he coauthors a National Science Review paper showing that LLM agents overcome the machine penalty in human–machine interaction when they act fairly.

  8. As of October 2026

    Professor in cyberspace security

    He is a professor at Northwestern Polytechnical University, affiliated with the School of Cyberspace Security and the School of Artificial Intelligence, Optics and Electronics (iOPEN). His research directions are artificial intelligence, reinforcement learning, multi-agent games, pattern recognition and networks.

Career

  1. Since 2016Northwestern Polytechnical UniversityProfessor
  2. From 2017University of MariborHonorary Professor
  3. 2014–2016Kyushu UniversitySenior researcher

From the biography.

  1. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes Northwestern Polytechnical University. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  2. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes Northwestern Polytechnical University. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  3. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes Northwestern Polytechnical University. 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. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Northwestern Polytechnical University. 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.

Colleagues

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

Sources and credits

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  1. Academy of Europe: Wang Zhen ae-info.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Game Theory Meets Artificial Intelligence: Intelligence as Interaction bcas.cas.cn. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Zhen Wang | Innovators Under 35 innovatorsunder35.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Exploiting a cognitive bias promotes cooperation in social dilemma experiments nature.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Zhen Wang - Global Young Academy globalyoungacademy.net. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Zhen Wang, Professor - Institute of Optoelectronics and Intelligence (iOPEN), Northwestern Polytechnical University iopen.nwpu.edu.cn. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Chronological List of IAPR Fellows iapr.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. Zhen Wang - Google Scholar scholar.google.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. Professor Wang Zhen's Team from School of Cyberspace Security Makes New Progress in Large-Scale Behavioral Game with Multi-Strategy Decision-Making wlkjaqxy.nwpu.edu.cn. Checked 21 October 2026.
  10. Social networking agency and prosociality are inextricably linked in economic games nature.com. Checked 21 October 2026.