Hi there! I am a fourth-year Ph.D. student in mathematics at the University of Washington, Seattle. I am jointly advised by Jarod Alper and Sara Billey. I am interested in Schubert calculus, equivariant intersection theory, and moduli theory. I am also passionate about formalization of mathematics and using machine learning to aid mathematical discoveries.
As of June 2026, I am the Acting Director of the UW Math AI Lab. We organized the UW 2026 Lean Hackathon. Starting summer 2026, I am a Simons Dissertation Fellow. I am visiting the University of California, Berkeley during the Fall 2026 semester.
I completed my B.A. studies at the University of Pennsylvania in 2023, double-majoring in mathematics and linguistics, and received an M.A. in Applied Math & Computer Science. Outside of mathematics, you will often find me on the tennis or basketball court, or trying to learn a foreign language.
- zengrf at uw dot edu
- Office
- Padelford C-20, UW Seattle
- CV
- Download curriculum vitae (August 2026)
How to pronounce my name
- Mandarin
- zēng (high tone) — ruò (falling tone) — fán (rising tone)
- Cantonese
- zang1 — joek6 — faan4
- Japanese On'yomi
- sou — jyaku — han
- Korean
- jeung — yak — beom
You might know me as Michael, マイケル, or Миша.
Recent activity
- SLMath Summer School on Moduli of Varieties. Berkeley, July 2026.
- ICARM Summer School on Formalization in Lean. Carnegie Mellon University, July 2026.
- 3rd AI for Math Workshop: Toward Self-Evolving Scientific Agents, ICML 2026. Seoul, July 2026.
- ICARM Workshop on Algebraic Geometry and Machine Learning. Carnegie Mellon University, June 2026.
- M0,ntréal ISM Discovery School: Combinatorics of Moduli of Curves. UQAM, May 2026.
- Graduate Student Topology and Geometry Conference. Rutgers University, April 2026.
- Graduate Student Combinatorics Conference. University of Illinois Chicago, March 2026.
- Western Algebraic Geometry Symposium. UCSD, March 2026.
Last updated 2026‑08‑17.