CMU Professor Ruslan Salakhutdinov highlights elite alumni across top AI labs
On X, the Carnegie Mellon professor answered a recurring question about Moonshot AI founder Zhilin Yang, then posted a long roster of former students and postdocs now spread across xAI, Mistral, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Tesla AI and major universities.
Entities: Russ Salakhutdinov, Zhilin Yang, Moonshot AI, Devendra Chaplot
In a post on X, Carnegie Mellon professor Ruslan Salakhutdinov said Moonshot AI founder Zhilin Yang was one of his PhD students, then used the moment to list a much longer roster of former students and postdocs he said are now working across Moonshot AI, xAI, Mistral, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Tesla AI, Meta and Microsoft, along with faculty jobs at MIT, Princeton and Peking University. For now, the story is the post itself and the conversation around it.
Combined views
199.1K
10 posts, first seen 4h ago
CMU Professor Ruslan Salakhutdinov highlights elite alumni across top AI labs
On X, the Carnegie Mellon professor answered a recurring question about Moonshot AI founder Zhilin Yang, then posted a long roster of former students and postdocs now spread across xAI, Mistral, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Tesla AI and major universities.
Entities: Russ Salakhutdinov, Zhilin Yang, Moonshot AI, Devendra Chaplot
Reactions from ranked influencers
10 posts
I’ve been asked several times whether Zhilin Yang, the founder of @Kimi_Moonshot was my PhD student. The answer is yes and he is absolutely brilliant. But I’ve been incredibly fortunate to work with so many outstanding PhD students over the years. So I thought I’d brag a little about them and their career paths (of course there are also many MSc and undergraduate students, sorry if I missed anyone): Founders / Founding Team Members Devendra Chaplot @dchaplot PhD, Founding Member Thinking Machines / Mistral Zhilin Yang PhD, Founder & CEO, Moonshot AI Jimmy Ba @jimmybajimmyba MSc/PhD, Co-founder xAI Hubert Tsai PhD, Co-founder Spuree, Apple Nitish Srivastava @nitishsr PhD, Co-founder Perceptual Machines; Co-founder Vayu Robotics Charlie Tang PhD, Co-founder Perceptual Machines, DE Shaw. Professors Paul Liang @pliang279 PhD, MIT Ben Eysenbach @ben_eysenbach PhD, Princeton University Ruosong Wang @RuosongW PhD, Peking University Bhuwan Dhingra @bhuwandhingra PhD, Duke University Roger Grosse @RogerGrosse Postdoc, University of Toronto Alexander Schwing Postdoc, UIUC Research Scientists Shuyan Zhou @shuyanzh36, Postdoc, Meta Superintelligence Lab Tiffany Min @SoYeonTiffMin PhD, Microsoft AI Murtaza Dalal @mihdalal PhD, Tesla AI Minji Yoon @MinjiYoon90 , PhD, Microsoft AI Shrimai Prabhumoye PhD, NVIDIA AI, Mistral Haitian Sun @sun_haitian PhD, Google DeepMind Emilio Parisotto PhD, Google DeepMind Lisa Lee PhD @rl_agent, Google DeepMind Manzil Zaheer @ManzilZaheer PhD, Google DeepMind Jamie Kiros PhD, Google Brain, OpenAI Yuri Burda PhD, OpenAI, Anthropic Cody Severinski PhD, Amazon
Thank you @yisongyue for kind words.
What @rsalakhu fails to mention of is that he's also great citizen of the community. #GeneralChair #ICML2024 https://twitter.com/rsalakhu/status/2078184317927219284
While this is an impressive array of talent, over 80% of the researchers Russ brags about were (self-) advised while he was juggling academic duties with major executive roles at Apple or Meta. He's not alone in this respect. Elite programs attract talent that buoys the lab, giving advisors the bandwidth to juggle significant outside roles. I'd be careful about assigning too much credit to the advisor and not enough to the students' raw talent and self-discipline.
I’ve been asked several times whether Zhilin Yang, the founder of @Kimi_Moonshot was my PhD student. The answer is yes and he is absolutely brilliant. But I’ve been incredibly fortunate to work with so many outstanding PhD students over the years. So I thought I’d brag a little about them and their career paths (of course there are also many MSc and undergraduate students, sorry if I missed anyone): Founders / Founding Team Members Devendra Chaplot @dchaplot PhD, Founding Member Thinking Machines / Mistral Zhilin Yang PhD, Founder & CEO, Moonshot AI Jimmy Ba @jimmybajimmyba MSc/PhD, Co-founder xAI Hubert Tsai PhD, Co-founder Spuree, Apple Nitish Srivastava @nitishsr PhD, Co-founder Perceptual Machines; Co-founder Vayu Robotics Charlie Tang PhD, Co-founder Perceptual Machines, DE Shaw. Professors Paul Liang @pliang279 PhD, MIT Ben Eysenbach @ben_eysenbach PhD, Princeton University Ruosong Wang @RuosongW PhD, Peking University Bhuwan Dhingra @bhuwandhingra PhD, Duke University Roger Grosse @RogerGrosse Postdoc, University of Toronto Alexander Schwing Postdoc, UIUC Research Scientists Shuyan Zhou @shuyanzh36, Postdoc, Meta Superintelligence Lab Tiffany Min @SoYeonTiffMin PhD, Microsoft AI Murtaza Dalal @mihdalal PhD, Tesla AI Minji Yoon @MinjiYoon90 , PhD, Microsoft AI Shrimai Prabhumoye PhD, NVIDIA AI, Mistral Haitian Sun @sun_haitian PhD, Google DeepMind Emilio Parisotto PhD, Google DeepMind Lisa Lee PhD @rl_agent, Google DeepMind Manzil Zaheer @ManzilZaheer PhD, Google DeepMind Jamie Kiros PhD, Google Brain, OpenAI Yuri Burda PhD, OpenAI, Anthropic Cody Severinski PhD, Amazon
The mark of a great professor isn’t just the papers they publish. It’s the people they help build.
I’ve been asked several times whether Zhilin Yang, the founder of @Kimi_Moonshot was my PhD student. The answer is yes and he is absolutely brilliant. But I’ve been incredibly fortunate to work with so many outstanding PhD students over the years. So I thought I’d brag a little about them and their career paths (of course there are also many MSc and undergraduate students, sorry if I missed anyone): Founders / Founding Team Members Devendra Chaplot @dchaplot PhD, Founding Member Thinking Machines / Mistral Zhilin Yang PhD, Founder & CEO, Moonshot AI Jimmy Ba @jimmybajimmyba MSc/PhD, Co-founder xAI Hubert Tsai PhD, Co-founder Spuree, Apple Nitish Srivastava @nitishsr PhD, Co-founder Perceptual Machines; Co-founder Vayu Robotics Charlie Tang PhD, Co-founder Perceptual Machines, DE Shaw. Professors Paul Liang @pliang279 PhD, MIT Ben Eysenbach @ben_eysenbach PhD, Princeton University Ruosong Wang @RuosongW PhD, Peking University Bhuwan Dhingra @bhuwandhingra PhD, Duke University Roger Grosse @RogerGrosse Postdoc, University of Toronto Alexander Schwing Postdoc, UIUC Research Scientists Shuyan Zhou @shuyanzh36, Postdoc, Meta Superintelligence Lab Tiffany Min @SoYeonTiffMin PhD, Microsoft AI Murtaza Dalal @mihdalal PhD, Tesla AI Minji Yoon @MinjiYoon90 , PhD, Microsoft AI Shrimai Prabhumoye PhD, NVIDIA AI, Mistral Haitian Sun @sun_haitian PhD, Google DeepMind Emilio Parisotto PhD, Google DeepMind Lisa Lee PhD @rl_agent, Google DeepMind Manzil Zaheer @ManzilZaheer PhD, Google DeepMind Jamie Kiros PhD, Google Brain, OpenAI Yuri Burda PhD, OpenAI, Anthropic Cody Severinski PhD, Amazon
A good sample of Carnegie Mellon talent pipeline
I’ve been asked several times whether Zhilin Yang, the founder of @Kimi_Moonshot was my PhD student. The answer is yes and he is absolutely brilliant. But I’ve been incredibly fortunate to work with so many outstanding PhD students over the years. So I thought I’d brag a little about them and their career paths (of course there are also many MSc and undergraduate students, sorry if I missed anyone): Founders / Founding Team Members Devendra Chaplot @dchaplot PhD, Founding Member Thinking Machines / Mistral Zhilin Yang PhD, Founder & CEO, Moonshot AI Jimmy Ba @jimmybajimmyba MSc/PhD, Co-founder xAI Hubert Tsai PhD, Co-founder Spuree, Apple Nitish Srivastava @nitishsr PhD, Co-founder Perceptual Machines; Co-founder Vayu Robotics Charlie Tang PhD, Co-founder Perceptual Machines, DE Shaw. Professors Paul Liang @pliang279 PhD, MIT Ben Eysenbach @ben_eysenbach PhD, Princeton University Ruosong Wang @RuosongW PhD, Peking University Bhuwan Dhingra @bhuwandhingra PhD, Duke University Roger Grosse @RogerGrosse Postdoc, University of Toronto Alexander Schwing Postdoc, UIUC Research Scientists Shuyan Zhou @shuyanzh36, Postdoc, Meta Superintelligence Lab Tiffany Min @SoYeonTiffMin PhD, Microsoft AI Murtaza Dalal @mihdalal PhD, Tesla AI Minji Yoon @MinjiYoon90 , PhD, Microsoft AI Shrimai Prabhumoye PhD, NVIDIA AI, Mistral Haitian Sun @sun_haitian PhD, Google DeepMind Emilio Parisotto PhD, Google DeepMind Lisa Lee PhD @rl_agent, Google DeepMind Manzil Zaheer @ManzilZaheer PhD, Google DeepMind Jamie Kiros PhD, Google Brain, OpenAI Yuri Burda PhD, OpenAI, Anthropic Cody Severinski PhD, Amazon
What @rsalakhu fails to mention of is that he's also great citizen of the community. #GeneralChair #ICML2024
I’ve been asked several times whether Zhilin Yang, the founder of @Kimi_Moonshot was my PhD student. The answer is yes and he is absolutely brilliant. But I’ve been incredibly fortunate to work with so many outstanding PhD students over the years. So I thought I’d brag a little about them and their career paths (of course there are also many MSc and undergraduate students, sorry if I missed anyone): Founders / Founding Team Members Devendra Chaplot @dchaplot PhD, Founding Member Thinking Machines / Mistral Zhilin Yang PhD, Founder & CEO, Moonshot AI Jimmy Ba @jimmybajimmyba MSc/PhD, Co-founder xAI Hubert Tsai PhD, Co-founder Spuree, Apple Nitish Srivastava @nitishsr PhD, Co-founder Perceptual Machines; Co-founder Vayu Robotics Charlie Tang PhD, Co-founder Perceptual Machines, DE Shaw. Professors Paul Liang @pliang279 PhD, MIT Ben Eysenbach @ben_eysenbach PhD, Princeton University Ruosong Wang @RuosongW PhD, Peking University Bhuwan Dhingra @bhuwandhingra PhD, Duke University Roger Grosse @RogerGrosse Postdoc, University of Toronto Alexander Schwing Postdoc, UIUC Research Scientists Shuyan Zhou @shuyanzh36, Postdoc, Meta Superintelligence Lab Tiffany Min @SoYeonTiffMin PhD, Microsoft AI Murtaza Dalal @mihdalal PhD, Tesla AI Minji Yoon @MinjiYoon90 , PhD, Microsoft AI Shrimai Prabhumoye PhD, NVIDIA AI, Mistral Haitian Sun @sun_haitian PhD, Google DeepMind Emilio Parisotto PhD, Google DeepMind Lisa Lee PhD @rl_agent, Google DeepMind Manzil Zaheer @ManzilZaheer PhD, Google DeepMind Jamie Kiros PhD, Google Brain, OpenAI Yuri Burda PhD, OpenAI, Anthropic Cody Severinski PhD, Amazon