Zerui Cheng (程泽瑞)

Welcome to Zerui (Marco) Cheng’s homepage~

The pronunciation of “Zerui” is similar to “the ray”. You can also call me Marco instead :)

• SHORT BIOGRAPHY

  I’m a 4th-year undergraduate in the Honored Yao Class of IIIS, Tsinghua University, and the recipient of the highest honor Yao Award for my undergraduate achievements. I am a curious, proactive, and aspirant student with a broad range of research interests, especially the techniques and theories that can potentially have fantastic real-world impacts. My current research lies in an intersection of blockchain, applied cryptography, data processing and analysis, and mechanism design. I’m also an experienced competitive programmer with notable achievements.

  Check my CV here for more information :).

• RECENT HIGHLIGHTS

  • [Jan 2023] I‘m fortunate to be selected as a participant in this year’s TV program <Super Brain: Season 10> on Jiangsu channel (broadcast at 21:10 every Friday, Beijing time). Stay tuned for my performance!

  • [Nov 2022] After serving as the vice president of IIIS Students' Congress for a year, I was honored to receive the most votes in the election and become a member of the newly-elected Presidium of IIIS Students' Congress!

  • [Oct 2022] I felt honored to receive this year’s Scholarship for Comprehensive Excellence at Tsinghua University!

  • [Sep 2022] I felt honored and extremely excited to receive this year’s Yao Award for my undergraduate achievements!

  • [Aug 2022] Our paper “zkBridge: Trustless Cross-chain Bridges Made Practical” was accepted to ACM CCS 2022!

  • [Aug 2022] I participated in IC3 Blockchain Camp, and our group “Client Security” won 1st place in the Hackathon!

  • [Jun 2022] I participated in Google Code Jam 2022 and was happy to finish in the top 0.5% among all participants worldwide.

  • [May 2022] I served as the reviewer of 2 papers in IEEE JSAC Blockchain Special Issue.

• SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

  • My research interests include blockchain, mechanism and incentive design, and applied cryptography.

  • 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 my first academic research paper (on a framework linking crowdsourcing with Proof-of-Work to serve as a new Proof-of-Useful-Work scheme) .

  • I was fortunate to be invited to serve as a reviewer for IEEE JSAC Special Issue (Intelligent Blockchain) 2022.

  • I was fortunate to be accepted as a research intern on blockchain 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 analysis and simulation 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).

• COMPETITIVE PROGRAMMING

  • I am also an experienced and proud competitive programmer (What is competitive programming?), where I regard randomized algorithms and optimization of search algorithms as my most proficient skills.

  • For offline contests, I have won a Gold Medal in ICPC (International Collegiate Programming Contest) Regional, a Silver Medal in ICPC East Asia Continental Final of, and two Gold Medals in CCPC (Chinese Collegiate Programming Contest). I’m also a two-time silver medalist of the Chinese National Olympiad in Informatics (both in 2017 and 2018).

  • For online contests, I rank 16/182781 worldwide (and 2nd in China) on the well-reputed online programming platform Hackerrank, and you can access the leaderboard for more details. I also compete on Codeforces (see my profile here) and CSAcademy (see my profile here).

  • Besides, I’m also an experienced problem setter for competitive programming contests. I have set and tested a number of problems for various contests. For example, I’m the main author of Codeforces Round #447 (problemset here) and a problem setter of the Chinese National Olympiad in Informatics in 2021.

• SOCIAL WORK

  • I’m now a member of the Presidium of IIIS Yao Class Students' Congress (a superset of Students' Union) at Tsinghua University, where I served as the vice president from Oct 2021 to Nov 2022.

  • 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 (Mercedes, F1), Charles Leclerc (Ferrari, F1) and Marco Reus (BVB Dortmund, Bundesliga).

  • Fan of stand-up comedies (including both Chinese-style cross-talk and American-style talk shows) and musicals. My favorite stars include Guo Degang and Hu Lan (Hooligan). Favorite musicals include “Hamilton” and “Les Miserables”.

  • Fan of music, especially those in musicals or in “Gu-Feng” (ancient Chinese) style.

  • Amateur but enthusiastic basketball player, although I don’t have strong skills :(

• Last revised on: Jan 11, 2023