About Me

I am Yi Shen (in Chinese: 沈 毅). In Sep 2025, I joined Google Deepmind.

Previously…

I was a researcher in OpenAI, led or co-led the research efforts for the following models:

• Advanced Voice Mode (speech-to-speech model).
• Text-to-speech: gpt-4o-mini-tts
• Speech-to-text: gpt-4o-transcribe, gpt-4o-mini-transcribe

Prior to my OpenAI journey, I was a senior staff tech lead manager in Waymo, leading Waymo’s Scene Understanding team.

I also worked for Nuro and Google.

I got my PhD degree in Computer Science from University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and Bachelor’s degree from Fudan University.

I’m proud of several exciting experiences, from the most recent to the earliest:

• Trained ChatGPT’s speech-to-speech models and grew the DAU from 0 to XX millions.
• Led an elite team in Waymo to solve long-tail issues to enable dense urban autonomous driving.
• Established Nuro’s software stack from ground-up.
• Trained and deployed Google’s first deepnet-based image embedding.
• Won the silver medal on 2005 ICPC world final (6th place overall).

In my spare time, I enjoy photography, sports and reading.