Zerui Cheng (程泽瑞)

Zerui Cheng (程泽瑞)

Ph.D. student at Princeton Univ., B.Eng from the Honored Yao Class of Tsinghua University

Princeton University

Welcome to Zerui Cheng’s homepage~

I’m a second-year Ph.D. student advised by Prof. Pramod Viswanath at Princeton University. I received B.Eng. in Computer Science from Yao Class at Tsinghua University with the honor Yao Award and Yao Class summa cum laude. My research focuses on decentralized and community-driven AI. I employ interdisciplinary methodologies to ensure transparency, fairness, and traceability across the entire AI lifecycle. The ultimate goal is to establish an idealistic ecosystem where everyone can contribute to AI development, with each contribution recognized and rewarded equitably. My research is grounded in a first-principle approach.

During my undergraduate studies, I had the privilege of working closely with Prof. Zhixuan Fang. In 2022, I was grateful to have the chance to improve my research skills as an intern with Prof. Fan Zhang’s group at Duke University and Prof. Dawn Song’s group at the University of California, Berkeley.

Google Scholar profile       Curriculum Vitae


Below are some highlighted projects to which I contribute. More exciting new works are under way — stay tuned!

Besides,

  • I’m an experienced competitive programmer with notable achievements in OI/ICPC contests (both as contestant and problem setter).
  • I served as the president of Yao Class Students' Congress in 2022-2023.
  • I was a participant of the TV show “Super Brain” (最强大脑 in Chinese) in 2023.
Interests
  • Generative AI
  • Blockchains
Education
  • Ph.D. student (2023.8 - now)

    Electrical and Computer Engineering, Princeton University

  • Bachelor in Engineering (2019.8 - 2023.6)

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

Recent Highlights

[Mar 2025] (paper alert)

Two AI benchmark papers that I co-authored are online now! (Paper 1: Humanity’s Last Exam, Paper 2: SPIN-Bench)

[Sep 2024] (paper alert)

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, hoping to build and innovate at the intersection of AI and blockchains!

[May 2024] (competitive programming)

Representing Princeton University and sitting on 1st of the leaderboard for the opening 40 minutes during the contest, our team (Princeton-1) finally ranked 22nd place at ICPC North America Championship 2024. We were the awardee of “First solution in the contest” and “First Solve of Problem D”, and won a $3,000 prize for this achievement. (Team Reaction Cut on Youtube ICPC Official Channel, Award Ceremony, Final Scoreboard)

[May 2024] (competitive programming)

I was grateful to be invited as a finalist to compete in MIT Informatics Tournament Spring Invitational 2024. Only top-16 contestants in the United States qualify for the final.

[Dec 2023] (competitive programming)

Our team ranked 1st place in the Princeton Computer Science Contest (COSCON) Fall 2023! (Event Website, Final Scoreboard)

Research

  • My research focuses on decentralized and community-driven AI. I employ interdisciplinary methodologies to ensure transparency, fairness, and traceability across the entire AI lifecycle, from data and GPU acquisition, training and inference, to fine-tuning, agentic frameworks, and evaluation. My goal is to establish an idealistic ecosystem where everyone can contribute to AI development, with each contribution recognized and rewarded equitably. This approach aims to overcome prevalent challenges such as monopolization, competitive arms races in data and GPUs, unreliable and noisy metrics, false claim and misinformation. My research is grounded in a first-principle approach.

  • Since sophomore year, I have been advised by Prof. Zhixuan Fang to conduct scientific research on blockchain at Tsinghua University, and it’s the initiation and enlightenment of my stepping into scientific research. During this period, I completed a research project: Game Theoretical Analysis of Multiple Selfish Mining on Blockchains, and my first academic research paper: Crowdsourcing Work as Mining: A Decentralized Computation and Storage Paradigm.

  • I was fortunate to be accepted as a research intern in the spring and summer of 2022, advised by Prof. Fan Zhang at Duke University and Prof. Dawn Song at the University of California, Berkeley. I carried out research on two projects during the internship. One was the design and analysis of side contracts against EIP-1559 in Ethereum, and the other was the design and implementation of cross-chain bridge protocols (the paper was accepted to ACM CCS 2022 and it’s my first-ever publication).

  • I served as a reviewer for IEEE JSAC Special Issue (Intelligent Blockchain) in 2022 and IEEE ToN in 2025.

  • The list of published papers and their details is attached below.

OML: Open, Monetizable, and Loyal AI
This work is on a new primitive for AI era: OML, which stands for Open, Monetizable and Loyal AI. It is also the whitepaper of the AI+crypto startup Sentient. Here is the website for the project.
SAKSHI: Decentralized AI Platforms
This work is on a paradigm for a decentralized HuggingFace which provides reliable model storage and inference on-chain. We also aim at a practical full implementation of the project. The whitepaper is online now.

Projects

Apart from publications, here are some of my undergraduate-level course projects and research projects.

Miscellaneous

  • COMPETITIVE PROGRAMMING

    * Onsite contests:

    In high school, I was a two-time silver medalist of the Chinese National Olympiad in Informatics (both in 2017 and 2018).

    During undergrad, representing Tsinghua University, I won a gold prize in ICPC (International Collegiate Programming Contest) Regional, a silver prize in ICPC East Asia Continental Final, and 2 gold prizes in CCPC (Chinese Collegiate Programming Contest).

    Now, representing Princeton University, I won an overall third place and bronze medal in ICPC Greater New York Regional 2023 and advanced to ICPC North America Continental Championship 2024.

    * Online contests:

    I rank 16/182,781 worldwide (and 2nd in China) on Hackerrank (leaderboard here).

    I also compete on Codeforces (see my profile here) and CSAcademy (see my profile here).

    * Problem Setting:

    Besides, I’m also an experienced problem setter for competitive programming contests.

    I have set and tested a number of problems for various contests.

    I’m the main author of Codeforces Round #447 (problemset here)

    I’m also a problem setter of the Chinese National Olympiad in Informatics in 2021. Here is the problem I set (original version in Chinese, English translation).

  • TV APPEARANCE

  • I was fortunate to be the participant of the well-known TV show “Super Brain” (最强大脑 in Chinese) in 2023. It’s truly a fun and unforgettable experience.

  • SOCIAL WORK

    • I was gratefully elected and served as the president of Yao Class Students' Congress at Tsinghua University for 2022-23 academic year, and I was the vice president and deputy secretary for 2021-22 academic year.

    • I’m a member of the Algorithm Association at Tsinghua University. And I served as the problem setter and coordinator of a number of contests (including National Olympiad in Informatics (2021), Tsinghua University Programming Contest (2020, 2021, 2022)).

    • I was a volunteer for the 110th anniversary of Tsinghua University.

  • AVOCATION

    • Fan of NBA, Formula 1, and European Soccer. My favorite sporting stars include Stephen Curry (Golden State Warriors, NBA), Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari, F1), Charles Leclerc (Ferrari, F1), and Marco Reus (LA Galaxy, previously BVB Dortmund).

    • Amateur yet enthusiastic player of Geoguessr and HugeQuiz (especially in geography and sports).

    • Fan of TV shows, stand-up comedies (including both Chinese-style cross-talk and American-style talk shows) and musicals. My favorite musicals include “Hamilton” and “Les Miserables”.