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 enjoy turning observations and insights from real-world phenomena into clean mathematical questions, as well as using theory to guide engineering designs toward practical improvements.

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

Authors are listed alphabetically unless they are not, in which case (*) denotes equal contribution.

• The Online k-Taxi Problem Is Competitive on All Metrics
  Christian Coester, Yichen Huang, Tze-Yang Poon

• A Bulow-Klemperer Theorem for Bundling and Improved Approximation Bounds for Simple Auctions
  Yichen Huang

• The Harmonic Online k-Server Algorithm Is Poly(k)-Competitive
  Yichen Huang

• Sublinear Metric Distortion for Matching
  Moses Charikar, Alireza Haqi, Jabari Hastings, Yichen Huang, Prasanna Ramakrishnan

• Online Fair Division with Upgrade Recourse
  Yichen Huang, Nicholas Teh

• Online Fair Division of Chores with Upgrade Recourse
  Yichen Huang, Nicholas Teh

• Tight Efficiency Guarantees for Strategyproof Linear Regression
  Yichen Huang*, Yuqi Pan*, Michael Mitzenmacher, Milind Tambe, Yiling Chen

Selected Publications

• Competitive Online Clustering with Movement Cost
  Christian Coester, Yichen Huang, Michael Mitzenmacher
  SODA 2027

• The Power of Arrival Times in Random-Order Online Facility Location
  Yichen Huang, Shaofeng H.-C. Jiang
  SODA 2027

• Online Monotone Metric Embeddings
  Christian Coester, Yichen Huang
  ICALP 2026

• The Mixed Birth-death/death-Birth Moran Process (20 mins talk)
  David A. Brewster, Yichen Huang, Michael Mitzenmacher, Martin A. Nowak
  ITCS 2026, 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 2027, 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 am learning to boulder. 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?)