The mystery of the MIT professor who joined the secretive trading firm (maybe)

Where is Yufei Zhao, a popular MIT associate math professor who once won a gold at an international mathematics Olympiad? Not, it seems, at MIT. Maybe, it seems, at secretive electronic trading firm TGS Management. 

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We don't know that Zhao is definitely at TGS because TGS didn't respond to our email. Nor did Zhao. Nor does Zhao indicate that he's at TGS on his resume, nor on LinkedIn. However, multiple sources tell us that Zhao has gone to TGS and former colleagues confirm that he's certainly no longer at MIT.

It's not clear when Zhao (apparently) joined TGS: it may have been over a year ago. Google Scholar suggests that he hasn't published any new academic papers since early last year. Nor has he said much on Twitter for a while, even though he was once very active there. 

Zhao may be holed up in an underground bunker. Or he may be in TGS Management's offices in Irving or Princeton. Unconfirmed reports suggest the firm, which has been described as the OG of quant trading and "mid-frequency zero," expects its employees to maintain zero presence on social media. If you join, digital invisibility follows.

This means that we also don't know if Zhao has hired any of his former students or vice versa. - There are suggestions (again unconfirmed) that a former student may have recommended Zhao.

To the extent that Zhao is at TGS, his presence might be taken as another indication of the kind of person the quant trading firm likes to hire. Zhao has won an array of math competitions alongside the Olympiad. He's also received an array of academic scholarships, fellowships and honourable mentions. As TGS expands into its twice as large new office in Irvine, people like Zhao might be who it's looking for.

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