We found Gary Wang. Here’s what we know, Part 2.
Asher Boiskin ('24) and Euronews
Wang’s senior student portrait from the 2011 yearbook (left) and a more recent photo of Wang, courtesy of Euronews (right).
In the second installment of The Wang Files…
While at Cherry Hill High School East, Gary (Zixiao) Wang was widely regarded as the smartest person of his 2011 class. As a sophomore, Wang took Multivariable Calculus, the highest level of math available for East students to take — and a course typically reserved for a select group of seniors on an advanced math track.
Wang also received admission into the Canada/USA Mathcamp, a five-week, selective summer program for 13-18 year old students. Wang attended the program alongside the other co-founder of FTX Trading Ltd., Sam Bankman-Fried. Sam Trabucco, former co-CEO of Alameda Research, a firm founded by Bankman-Fried, also attended the camp.
In 2010, Wang participated in the 61st Annual American Mathematics Competition (AMC), where he received the Student Distinguished Honor Roll for AMC 12, an award based on 1% of the top scoring students in the competition. In 2011, Wang additionally qualified as one of the top winners for the fifth annual North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad (NACLO).
“[Despite this, Wang] was not a straight A student[, though]… he was exceptional in a few areas, like math and science… [and] he was pretty good with computer science,” a class of 2012 East alum, who interacted with Wang during East Math Club meetings, told Eastside.
“[He was a] nerdy kind of fellow in a good way… with a nerdy sense of humor… I think [his introverted] personality [was something] a lot of people can relate to… in his case, it was a bit more on the extreme side,” the alum elaborated.
“We were really into this webcomic called XKCD, and we would crack jokes… Back then, my closest friend in high school [and I] would kind of mess with him… the kind of interactions you have with a friend who’s more on the shy side, you know, you do a little bit of trolling,” he said.
Eastside editors also visited Wang’s old house, which the Wang family sold in 2017, to ask Wang’s childhood neighbors to recall any interactions they had with him or his family.
“[His parents’] personalities were very good, very kind,” one former neighbor told Eastside, recalling that he had never seen Wang, who at that time had already started working.
After graduating from East early in 2011, Wang headed to MIT in pursuit of degrees in both mathematics and computer science. For Wang, these degrees seem more than fitting considering his extensive involvement in STEM clubs at East, as discussed in Part 1 of Eastside’s The Wang Files.
In his first year at MIT, Wang participated in Mobile Autonomous Systems Laboratory (Maslab), an annual robotics competition held at the school in January. He competed with three other players on a team called “T.A.R.T.” (officially Team 5). Wang’s team did not win the competition, though Eastside editors obtained access to the team’s work journal — which contains information about Wang’s MIT robotics experience.
While it’s not entirely clear if Wang directly contributed to the journal, it references his name multiple times. Per the journal, Wang “worked on vision code” and “debug[ging] motor problems” for his robot, in addition to “ball recognition code[,]…mouse odometry[,]…[and] software architecture,” among other things.
Aside from MIT robotics, Wang worked on a number of STEM related projects during his college career. Wang helped develop “the online management system for the MIT Educational Studies Program…[and created] a JavaScript app that modifies the pitch of user-uploaded audio files,” according to a website he created as an undergraduate student. He also built a website with “a button [for] users [who want to] view random webcomics.”
Wang created an account in 2011 with GitHub, an online tool for coding projects, which he has recently used. In 2022, Wang made a total of 800 contributions to projects on GitHub. He last used his GitHub account on November 11, 2022, when he made contributions to a private code repository.
Wang does not follow any accounts on GitHub, and he currently has 129 followers on the service. It appears that a few of these followers may have worked with Wang in the past, have interest in cryptocurrency or have some connection to South Jersey, where Wang grew up.
Eastside is currently investigating Gary Wang and plans to publish additional articles on the subject as more information is found.
Asher Boiskin is a senior and one of Eastside’s Online Editors-in-Chief. He loves participating in Model United Nations conferences, reading nonfiction,...
Whether Alena is chasing a story or talking to a friend, she asks thought-provoking queries in hopes of sparking meaningful conversations. She finds joy...
Gia, a Print Editor-In-Chief, loves stargazing, asking questions to strangers, and wandering in bookstores. Some of her favorite things include The Marginalian,...
Abdikadir Abdi • Feb 20, 2023 at 9:00 pm
To find the link to part one, google ” We found Gary Wang. Here is what we know”.
David Liu • Jan 13, 2023 at 1:31 pm
I was also Cherry Hill East -> MIT -> Google just like Gary! Although in my case I was East ’05, then did undergrad at Rutgers before going to MIT for grad school and postdoc, and finally joined Google in 2019, so I only overlapped with Gary at MIT between 2011 and 2015.
Lesley • Jan 12, 2023 at 8:40 am
Where can I find part one??? This was a very interesting article.