Tiancheng Lou (; born 1986) is a Chinese businessman who is the co-founder and chief technology officer of

Pony.ai Pony.ai is an autonomous vehicle technology company co-located in Silicon Valley, Beijing, and Guangzhou. History The company was founded in December 2016 by James Peng and Tiancheng Lou who were formerly developers for Baidu in Silicon Valle ...

, an

autonomous vehicle Vehicular automation involves the use of mechatronics, artificial intelligence, and multi-agent systems to assist the operator of a vehicle (car, aircraft, watercraft, or otherwise).Hu, J.; Bhowmick, P.; Lanzon, A.,Group Coordinated Control o ...

technology company. He is also a competitive programmer whose achievements include winning the

Google Code Jam Google Code Jam is an international programming competition hosted and administered by Google. The competition began in 2003. The competition consists of a set of algorithmic problems which must be solved in a fixed amount of time. Competitors ...

twice in 2008 and 2009, winning the

TopCoder Open Topcoder Open (TCO) is an annual design, software development, data science and competitive programming championship, organized by Topcoder, and hosted in different venues around US. In the first two years, 2001 and 2002, the tournament was titl ...

Marathon in 2015 and being a gold medalist at the 2004

International Olympiad in Informatics The International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI) is an annual competitive programming and one of the International Science Olympiads for secondary school students. It is the second largest science olympiad, after International Mathematical Olympi ...

, coming third overall. In terms of prize money won in major competitions, Lou is currently the most successful competitive programmer from China. In 2017, Lou was included in the

Innovators Under 35 The Innovators Under 35 is a peer-reviewed annual award and listicle published by ''MIT Technology Review'' magazine, naming the world's top 35 innovators under the age of 35. at ''Technology Review'' with lists of winners at technologyreview.com ...

list by

MIT Technology Review ''MIT Technology Review'' is a bimonthly magazine wholly owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and editorially independent of the university. It was founded in 1899 as ''The Technology Review'', and was re-launched without "The" in ...

magazine. In 2022,

Business Insider ''Insider'', previously named ''Business Insider'' (''BI''), is an American financial and business news website founded in 2007. Since 2015, a majority stake in ''Business Insider''s parent company Insider Inc. has been owned by the German pub ...

named him as one of the 35 under 35 rising stars of the autonomous-vehicle industry.

Early life and education

Lou was born in 1986 in Jinan, Shandong province. When he was in sixth grade of primary school, he moved to

Hangzhou Hangzhou ( or , ; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ), also romanized as Hangchow, is the capital and most populous city of Zhejiang, China. It is located in the northwestern part of the province, sitting at the head of Hangzhou Bay, whic ...

Zhejiang Zhejiang ( or , ; , Chinese postal romanization, also romanized as Chekiang) is an East China, eastern, coastal Provinces of China, province of the People's Republic of China. Its capital and largest city is Hangzhou, and other notable citie ...

province due to his parents' work. Both of his parents worked at

Zhejiang University Zhejiang University, abbreviated as ZJU or Zheda and formerly romanized as Chekiang University, is a national public research university based in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. It is a member of the prestigious C9 League and is selected into the n ...

where his father was in the School of Public Affairs while his mother was in the Department of Chemistry. Lou attended Hangzhou No. 14 High School where he graduated in 2004. In 2004, Lou came third place overall in the 2004 International Olympiad in Informatics where he won a gold medal. Due to his performance, he received a recommendation to attend

Tsinghua University Tsinghua University (; abbr. THU) is a national public research university in Beijing, China. The university is funded by the Ministry of Education. The university is a member of the C9 League, Double First Class University Plan, Projec ...

at the department of Computer Science and Technology. Lou graduated from Tsinghua University in 2008 with a bachelor's degree in

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includi ...

. After finishing his first degree, he joined the Institute for Theoretical Computer Science at Tsinghua University as a PHD candidate in 2008 and earned his PhD in 2012. Lou was part of the university team in the 2007 and 2009

International Collegiate Programming Contest The ICPC International Collegiate Programming Contest, known as the ICPC, is an annual multi-tiered competitive programming competition among the universities of the world. Directed by ICPC Executive Director and Baylor Professor Dr. William B. ...

which won second place both times.

Career

After earning his PhD from Tsinghua University in 2012, Lou joined

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

as an engineer and in 2015 worked in their autonomous vehicle team. At the start of 2016, he left Google to work briefly at

Quora Quora () is a social question-and-answer website based in Mountain View, California. It was founded on June 25, 2009, and made available to the public on June 21, 2010. Users can collaborate by editing questions and commenting on answers that ...

and then

Baidu Baidu, Inc. ( ; , meaning "hundred times") is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products and artificial intelligence (AI), headquartered in Beijing's Haidian District. It is one of the l ...

. In December 2016, he left Baidu along with Baidu colleague, James Peng (Chief Architect for Autonomous Driving), to found autonomous driving startup

. As of 2018, Lou is the chief technology officer of the firm.

Achievements

: Gold medal (third place overall in 2004) *

World Finals: 2 Gold medals (second place in 2007 and 2009) *

: Champion (2008 and 2009) *

Facebook Hacker Cup Facebook Hacker Cup (also known as the Meta Hacker Cup) is an annual international programming competition hosted and administered by Facebook. The competition began in 2011 as a means to identify top engineering talent for potential employment ...

: Second place (2022), Third place (2011 and 2012) *

Algorithm: Second place (2010) * TopCoder Open Marathon: Champion (2015), Second place (2013) *

Codeforces Codeforces is a website that hosts competitive programming contests. It is maintained by a group of competitive programmers from ITMO University led by Mikhail Mirzayanov. Since 2013, Codeforces claims to surpass Topcoder in terms of active co ...

: Legendary Grandmaster (peak rating 3047) A more comprehensive list of achievements can be found at the Competitive Programming Hall Of Fame website.

Publications

* * * * * *

References

External links

;Online coding profiles *

Topcoder Topcoder (formerly TopCoder) is a crowdsourcing company with an open global community of designers, developers, data scientists, and competitive programmers. Topcoder pays community members for their work on the projects and sells community s ...

ACRush
*

CodeChef Code-Chef is an online educational program and competitive programming community of global programmers. Code-Chef started as an educational initiative in 2009 by Directi, an Indian software company. In 2020, it became owned by Unacademy. Alon ...