Yichen Huang

I am a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at Harvard University under the wise guidance of Prof. Michael Mitzenmacher. I am broadly interested in theoretical computer science, especially in decision making under uncertainty. More concretely, I study uncertainty arising from not knowing the future (online algorithms), from making use of unreliable predictions (learning-augmented algorithms), and from strategic agents with private information (mechanism design). I also like turning observations and insights from real-world phenomena into clean mathematical questions and solutions.

I completed my undergraduate studies during 2020 to 2024 at the University of Oxford, where I had the pleasure of working with Prof. Christian Coester and Prof. Standa Živný. In Spring 2026, I visited Prof. Shaofeng Jiang at Peking University and Prof. Shuran Zheng at Tsinghua University.

I enjoy talking to people with different backgrounds and perspectives. If you are interested in collaborating, or simply want to chat about anything, feel free to reach out at [{firstname}{lastname}]@g.harvard.edu.

Working Papers

Collective Tree Exploration with Predictions
Romain Cosson, Yichen Huang, Michael Mitzenmacher, Ali Vakilian

Competitive Online Clustering with Movement Cost
Christian Coester, Yichen Huang, Michael Mitzenmacher

The Power of Arrival Times in Random-Order Online Facility Location
Yichen Huang, Shaofeng H.-C. Jiang

Form vs Information: The Regimes of Data Property Rights
Yichen Huang, Zhen Sun, Xinzhen Xu, Bozhong Zheng

Selected Publications

Online Monotone Metric Embeddings (10 min)
Christian Coester, Yichen Huang
ICALP 2026

The Mixed Birth-death/death-Birth Moran Process (20 min)
David A. Brewster, Yichen Huang, Michael Mitzenmacher, Martin A. Nowak
ITCS 2026, Major Revision at PLOS Computational Biology

Service, Organizations, and Teaching

I currently co-organize TGINF, a theory seminar for graduate students and postdocs at Harvard.

PC: EC 2026.
Subreviewer: SODA 2026, APPROX 2026, ICALP 2026, ITCS 2026.

I have been the TA for the following courses:

Harvard CS 2380 Optimized Democracy, Fall 2025.
Harvard CS 2242 Probabilistic Analysis and Algorithms, Fall 2026.

Misc

My Erdős number is 3 via the chain YH → Michael Mitzenmacher → Joel H. Spencer → Paul Erdős.

Outside academia, I enjoy playing poker and have recently gotten quite into bouldering. I also spend some time in (Mandarin Chinese) competitive debating and I currently lead the Harvard Chinese Debate Team

(Are you looking for physicist Yichen Huang?)