Yi Sun is a mathematician and entrepreneur whose academic work spans probability, high‑dimensional statistics, and their applications to machine learning. He earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and later served on the faculty of the University of Chicago before taking academic leave to found Axiom, where he serves as founder and CEO. ^{[1] [2]}​

Education

Sun studied mathematics at Harvard University from 2006 to 2010, earning both an A.B. degree with a secondary field in economics and an A.M. degree in mathematics. He later completed a Master of Advanced Study in mathematics with distinction at the University of Cambridge between 2010 and 2011, followed by a Ph.D. in mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2011 to 2016. ^{[1] [3] [2]}

Career

Sun began his career through research, teaching, and quantitative finance roles, including internships at D. E. Shaw & Co., Google Research, and Jane Street Capital between 2007 and 2011. During this period, he also worked with the Math Olympiad Program as an instructor and served as a head grader for Art of Problem Solving.

From 2016 to 2019, Sun was a Simons Fellow at Columbia University, later becoming the Joseph F. Ritt Assistant Professor from 2019 to 2020. In 2020, he joined the University of Chicago as an assistant professor in the Department of Statistics.

In 2023, Sun co-founded Axiom, a blockchain and cryptographic infrastructure company based in New York. ^{[1] [2] [3] [4]}

Public Speaking and Media Appearances

Sun regularly appears in technical talks and interviews related to zero‑knowledge systems and Axiom’s approach to programmable infrastructure. One example is a conference presentation described in the EthCC Livestream series in 2025, where he discussed building a performant and modular zkVM framework with OpenVM under the Axiom affiliation. The talk’s framing emphasizes performance and extensibility as core design goals in zkVM development. ^[5]​

The following video is an example of Sun’s public technical presentations and captures his perspective on zkVM design trade‑offs and modular implementation.