Yifan Xu

Hi! I’m Yifan Xu, a rising junior at Rice University majoring in Computer Science, Mathematics and Operations Research. I am broadly interested in optimization for machine learning applications. I am fortunate to be mentored by Professor César A. Uribe, and my current research explores how we can ultilize tools from optimal transport to compare and analyze food webs.

Outside of research, I’m a TA and Peer Educator in both Math and CS departments and love helping others understand mathematical ideas. I also enjoy playing basketball, Go, and all sorts of board games. I’ve recently started running a few tabletop RPG campaigns as a game master!

news

March 2, 2026 My paper Wasserstein Motifs: Non-deterministic Alignment of Ecological Networks has been accepted at the Learning Meaningful Representations of Life (LMRL) Workshop at ICLR 2026!

Feb 25, 2026 My extended abstract Enabling Workforce Intelligence through Occupational Taxonomy Alignment has been accepted for presentation at 2026 Network Science and Economics Conference!

Feb 14, 2026 My blog post about vibe writing is up!

Jan 17, 2026 My paper Identifying common backbones of interactions underlying food webs via non-deterministic alignments has been accepted at ICASSP 2026! Can’t wait to visit Barcelona for the first time!

May 17, 2025 My second blog post about my journey studying Go is up!

May 11, 2025 This site is created, and my first blog post is up!