Full Biography

I am a Research Scientist at Google Brain where I am driving efforts pertaining to large language models and artificial general intelligence. Previously, I was a Tech Lead of a small US-based research team at Google AI. You can find my Google Research homepage here. These days I’m interested in language models, transformers, machine learning and scaling research.

Previously, I obtained my PhD from NTU, Singapore.

Fun Fact: I also obtained an associate diploma in classical piano performance from Trinity College London in 2012.

Work Experience and Education

• Research Scientist (Nov 2019 - Now)
  • Google Brain, Singapore (Nov 2022 - Now)
  • Google AI/Research, Singapore (Jan 2022 - Nov 2022)
  • Google AI/Research, Mountain View California (Nov 2019 - Jan 2022)
• Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) - Computer Science (Jan 2016- June 2019)
  • NTU, Singapore
• Bachelors of Engineering (B.Eng) - Computer Science (Aug 2011- Dec 2015)
  • NTU, Singapore

Full CV is available upon request.

Personal

• I am Singaporean and happily married to Vanessa Chew. The origin of my online persona (github id, vanzytay) is the fusion of our names.
• I enjoy classical music and classical piano, especially works of Chopin, Liszt and Beethoven. I used to practice a lot, and enjoy tackling Chopin and Liszt etudes. I don’t actively practice anymore but I still enjoy listening to awesome classical music every now and then.
• I wish I could say more about work life balance.

Contact

Some guidance can be found below:

• Preferred mode of contact is my personal email at ytay017@gmail.com. LinkedIn message is also good. You could also follow me on Twitter at ytay017 :).
• Please send me emails or messages in English.
• I do not intend to review for journals with some exceptions (i.e., good ones such as TACL, TMLR, JMLR). Please stop spamming me with invitations to review for journals 😠!!!!
• Pertaining to pre-Google work: all released source code can be found on my github. Stuff that are not already on my github have no planned release. I also have a full time job and do not plan on providing customer service or digging up old code.
• For code at where I currently work, everything is subject to approval. I can give you an ETA if you send me an email but this is non-negotiable (and again, sometimes out of my control). I also cannot randomly send pieces of files through email to the outside world so please don’t request “just for a csv file”.
• In the interest of my own time, sanity and work commitments I may not reply (promptly or altogether) to misc email or linkedin messages.