User:Cyanopine

Early Life and Education

Born and raised in Guangzhou to parents from Teoswa, Hong is one of only two people in her extended family who have had the opportunity to receive a college education.^[1] As a child, Hong loved to compete in her province's mathematics Olympiad, where she was challenged to solve complex problems.^[2] On the basis of her unusual mathematical prowess at a young age, Hong was invited to attend the Stanford University Mathematics Camp as a teenager, where she became fascinated with Legendre and Jacobi symbols, as well as handle decompositions.^[2] She self-studied English so that she could learn from graduate textbooks in mathematics.^[2]

For university studies, Hong moved to the United States attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts.^[3] Double-majoring in mathematics and physics, Hong completed her studies in three years and graduated in 2022.^[3] During that time, Hong published nine papers in peer-reviewed academic journals on topics including number theory, combinatorics, theoretical computer science, and probability.^[2] She also took classes in advanced mathematics abroad through the Budapest Semester in Mathematics program. During her freshman year, Hong was also on the MIT Cheerleading team.^[4] After attending MIT, Hong was selected for a Rhodes Scholarship and enrolled at the University of Oxford in Oxford, England.^[3] During her time at Oxford, Hong conducted research in deep learning at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre's Gatsby Computational Unit at University College London. She graduated with and MSc in Neuroscience in 2023, having written two dissertations with distinction.^[5] Following her graduation from Oxford, Hong returned to the United States and enrolled in a dual-degree program at Stanford University to earn a PhD in mathematics and a JD from Stanford Law School.^[6] She was selected as a Knight-Hennessy Scholar in 2024.^[7]

During her academic career, Hong received numerous awards recognizing her exceptional work in mathematics. In 2021, she was awarded the Alice T. Schafer Prize by the Association for Women in Mathematics, which is annually awarded to a single undergraduate woman for excellence in mathematics.^[8] In 2022, Hong was awarded the Mirzakhani Fellowship, an honor commemorating Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani, the first woman to ever be awarded the Fields Medal (2014).^[7] That same year, the American Mathematical Society, the Mathematical Association of America, and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics awarded Hong the Frank and Brennie Morgan Prize, which is annually awarded to a single undergraduate student in the United States, Canada, or Mexico for mathematical excellence.^[9][10] Awarded annually since 1995, Hong was only the fifth woman to ever be awarded the Prize.

During her academic career, her mentors have included Pavel Etingof,^[8] Scott Sheffield,^[8] Wei Zhang,^[8] Gigliola Staffilani,^[8] David Vogan,^[8] Ken Ono,^[8] and Joseph Gallian.^[8]

Career

Hong put her academic studies at Stanford University on pause in 2025 after meeting Shubho Sengupta by chance at a coffee shop in Palo Alto, California. The pair struck up a conversation and discovered that they had a shared interest in applying recent developments in artificial intelligence to complex, unsolved theoretical math problems.^[11][12] Together, they soon founded Axiom in San Francisco, which Hong describes as an "AI mathematician" that is designed to tackle the most difficult problems on the frontiers of physics, advanced algorithms, and cryptography.^[11][13][14] Within the year, the artificial intelligence that the Axiom team built solved two unsolved Erdős problems that had eluded mathematicians for decades.^[11] It has since continued to solve previously unsolvable problems.^[15]

Axiom, which has received tens of millions of dollars in venture capital funding,^[12][14] has attracted top mathematical talent from both academia and industry. Much of the Axiom team left Meta AI and Google Brain to apply themselves to Axiom's mission of solving complex math problems using artificial intelligence. Top academic talent have also departed university positions to join the Axiom team, including Hong's mentor during a research intensive at the University of Virginia, Ken Ono.^[16]

In 2026, Hong was named to the annual Forbes 30 Under 30 for her work at Axiom.^[17] She remains the founder and CEO of Axiom.