Yao Fu is a research-driven machine learning engineer with eight years of experience focused on advancing large language models and long-context reasoning. Currently a Member of Technical Staff at xAI working on language model pretraining, he previously contributed to Gemini 3 perception work at Google DeepMind and conducted targeted research internships at IBM, AI2, Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance. He holds a PhD in NLP from the University of Edinburgh, an MS in Machine Learning from Columbia, and a strong systems-and-business foundation from Peking University. Yao’s background spans both academic rigor and product-scale model engineering, with a track record of improving reasoning and structured latent-variable approaches. Colleagues describe him as someone who moves fluidly between core research and practical pretraining engineering—an ability reflected in seamless transitions from internships to influential roles at leading AI labs. Based in Edinburgh, he blends international research collaborations with hands-on model-building at the cutting edge of generative AI.
8 years of coding experience
1 year of employment as a software developer
Ph.D. Natural Language Processing, Ph.D. Natural Language Processing at The University of Edinburgh
Bachelor's Degree Computer Science, Bachelor's Degree Computer Science at Peking University
Visiting student Natural Language Processing, Visiting student Natural Language Processing at Cornell University
Master's Degree Machine Learning, Master's Degree Machine Learning at Columbia University
Contributions:3 PRs, 24 pushes, 1 branch in 2 years 7 months
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