Hi, I’m Michael!

I currently research agentic coding capabilities at Google DeepMind, which I came over to from working on the model training team at the startup Windsurf.

I graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard College with an A.B. in Computer Science and Government, and also concurrently completed my A.M. in Statistics. On campus, I led Harvard Computer Society, organized study groups with visiting fellows from Congress and the Cabinet through the Institute of Politics, and sang all four years with the Harvard Glee Club.

In college, I conducted research in computational social science, with an emphasis on statistical methods for better understanding Congress and elections. My senior thesis “Words Speak as Loudly as Actions: Deep Learning Methods for Stance-Based Ideal Points from Congressional Speeches,” advised by Prof. Ariel Proccacia and António Câmara won the Thomas Temple Hoopes Prize for outstanding thesis and the Gerda Richards Crosby Prize for the highest-ranked student in Government (pre-print forthcoming). My work with Prof. Kosuke Imai on the ALARM Project to better understand gerrymandering has also led to a paper that quantitatively evaluates redistricting reforms through a game-theoretic and causal inference framework, as well as an R package for working with redistricting data.

I’m always happy to meet new people, gain new experiences, and chat about big ideas and interesting tidbits in the world – feel free to send me an email at michaelzhao[at]alumni[dot]harvard[dot]edu!