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

autonomous vehicle Vehicular automation is using technology to assist or replace the operator of a vehicle such as a car, truck, aircraft, rocket, military vehicle, or boat. Assisted vehicles are ''semi-autonomous'', whereas vehicles that can travel without a ...

technology company. He is also a competitive programmer whose achievements include winning the Google Code Jam twice in 2008 and 2009, winning the Topcoder Open 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 competition and one of the International Science Olympiads Student competition, for secondary school students. The first IOI was held in 1989 in Pravetz, Bulgar ...

, 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 list by

MIT Technology Review ''MIT Technology Review'' is a bimonthly magazine wholly owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was founded in 1899 as ''The Technology Review'', and was re-launched without "''The''" in its name on April 23, 1998, under then pu ...

magazine. In 2022,

Business Insider ''Business Insider'' (stylized in all caps: BUSINESS INSIDER; known from 2021 to 2023 as INSIDER) is a New York City–based multinational financial and business news website founded in 2007. Since 2015, a majority stake in ''Business Inside ...

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 Jinan is the capital of the province of Shandong in East China. With a population of 9.2 million, it is one of the largest cities in Shandong in terms of population. The area of present-day Jinan has played an important role in the history of ...

Shandong Shandong is a coastal Provinces of China, province in East China. Shandong has played a major role in Chinese history since the beginning of Chinese civilization along the lower reaches of the Yellow River. It has served as a pivotal cultural ...

province. When he was in sixth grade of primary school, he moved to

Hangzhou Hangzhou, , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ; formerly romanized as Hangchow is a sub-provincial city in East China and the capital of Zhejiang province. With a population of 13 million, the municipality comprises ten districts, two counti ...

Zhejiang ) , translit_lang1_type2 = , translit_lang1_info2 = ( Hangzhounese) ( Ningbonese) (Wenzhounese) , image_skyline = 玉甑峰全貌 - panoramio.jpg , image_caption = View of the Yandang Mountains , image_map = Zhejiang i ...

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

Zhejiang University Zhejiang University (ZJU) is a public university, public research university in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. It is affiliated with the Ministry of Education (China), Ministry of Education. The university is part of Project 211, Project 985, and D ...

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 (THU) is a public university in Haidian, Beijing, China. It is affiliated with and funded by the Ministry of Education of China. The university is part of Project 211, Project 985, and the Double First-Class Constructio ...

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, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

. 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 International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) is an annual multi-tiered competitive programming competition among the universities of the world. Directed by ICPC Executive Director and Baylor Professor William B. Poucher, the ICPC oper ...

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 and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

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 an American social question-and-answer website and online knowledge market headquartered in Mountain View, California. It was founded on June 25, 2009, and made available to the public on June 21, 2010. Users can post questions, answ ...

and then

Baidu Baidu, Inc. ( ; ) is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet services and artificial intelligence. It holds a dominant position in China's search engine market (via Baidu Search), and provides a wide variety of o ...

. In December 2016, he left Baidu along with Baidu colleague, James Peng (Chief Architect for Autonomous Driving), to found autonomous driving startup Pony.ai. 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) * Google Code Jam: Champion (2008 and 2009) * Facebook Hacker Cup: Second place (2022), Third place (2011 and 2012) * Topcoder Open Algorithm: Second place (2010) * TopCoder Open Marathon: Champion (2015), Second place (2013) * Codeforces: 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
* Codeforces
ACRush
*

CodeChef CodeChef is an online programming platform that empowers learners to master coding through structured courses, thousands of practice problems, and regular contests. It offers beginner-friendly paths in languages like Python, C++, and Java, along ...