Zerui Cheng (程泽瑞)

Zerui Cheng (程泽瑞)

Ph.D. Candidate at Princeton Univ., AI and Blockchain Researcher

Princeton University

Hi there, I’m Zerui Cheng (in Chinese：程泽瑞)~

I am a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University advised by Prof. Pramod Viswanath. Starting Sep 2025, I will also be a part-time student researcher at ByteDance Seed. Before Princeton, I completed my B.Eng. in Computer Science from Yao Class at Tsinghua, graduating summa cum laude and earning the prestigious Yao Award.

My research interests lie at the intersection of AI evaluation, deployment, and blockchains. I aim to leverage technology to promote fairness and transparency in the AI era, with a strong focus on real-world impact. My work has contributed to the technical foundation of high-profile startups including Sentient, Kite AI, and PolyHedra.

Beyond research, I am an avid competitive programmer and a member of the Competitive Programming Hall of Fame. I previously served as President of the Yao Class Students’ Congress and was a contestant on the TV show “Super Brain Season 10” (最强大脑).

I’m always open to research and industry collaborations. Feel free to contact and chat!

Google Scholar profile       Curriculum Vitae

Interests
  • LLMs & Code Generation
  • Decentralized AI Systems
  • Blockchain & Cryptography
  • AI Benchmarking & Evaluation
Education

  • Ph.D. student (2023 - now)

    Electrical and Computer Engineering, Princeton University

  • B.Eng. in Computer Science (2019 - 2023)

    Yao Class, the Insititute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences (IIIS), Tsinghua University

Recent Highlights

[Aug 2025] (talks)
[Jun 2025] (papers)

Two AI benchmark papers that I co-first-authored are online now!

  • Paper 1: LiveCodeBench Pro: Hard and contamination-free code generation benchmark which is covered by MIT Tech Review and has already accumulated more than 1 million views on X;
  • Paper 2: PeerBench: A new paradigm for AI benchmarking towards better openness and fairness;
[Jun 2025] (talk)
[May 2025] (personal update)
  • Passed my Ph.D. general exam. I’m officially a Ph.D. candidate now!
  • Thank you to all my committee members: Prof. Chi Jin, Prof. Sanjeev Kulkarni, and Prof. Pramod Viswanath!
[Apr 2025] (poster presentation)
  • Poster presentation on OML at Citadel Securities PhD Summit 2025. Thank you Citadel Securities!
[Mar 2025] (papers)

Two AI benchmark papers that I co-authored are online now!

[Sep 2024] (paper)
  • The whitepaper on OML: Open, Monetizable and Loyal AI is live. Don’t hesitate to check it out!
  • Here is the link to whitepaper.
[Aug 2024] (personal update)
  • Started my one-month internship as a Quantitative Researcher at JQ Investment.
[May 2024] (personal update)
  • Started my internship as an AI fellow at Sentient.

Papers

For most recent updates, please refer to my Google Scholar profile. Here are some selected publications.

Major Projects with Real-World Impact

Recent Papers on AI Evaluation

Decentralized AI Platforms

  • Sakshi (2023) - Proof-of-Inference for decentralized AI
  • PoCW (APNET 2023) - AI computation as Proof-of-Work in blockchains

Contact