Yang (Richard) Peng
Associate Professor, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
NOTE:
due to load constraints,
I can only start new research projects with students with
IMO18-24 scores at least 30, or IOI18-24 rank top 9, or consistently reproducible equivalents.
This is entirely due to limits of my bandwidth and resources.
My research is broadly in the design and analysis of fast algorithms for solving fundamental computational problems, including graph algorithms, dynamic algorithms, and linear algebraic algorithms.
My representative results include linear systems solvers, max-flow/min-cut algorithms, and time/space efficient data structures for matchings, resistances, and matrices.
I teach courses on algorithms and data structures, and supervise research projects at all levels.
I am also actively involved with outreach activities in the programming contest community, with focus at the high-school level.
I am the point of contact for organizing the CMU teams attending the
International Collegiate Programming Contest.
I am part of the wonderful theory@cs.cmu group.
I was an assistant, then associate, professor at Georgia Tech from 2015 to 2021, and was an associate professor at the University of Waterloo from 2021 to 2023.
Prior to that, I received my BMath from Waterloo, PhD from CMU, and was a postdoc at MIT.
I am recipient of the NSF Career Award, the 2011 Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship, the 2013 CMU SCS Distinguished Dissertation Award, the 2021 SODA Best Paper Award, and the 2022 FOCS Best Paper Award.
When not thinking about problems, I enjoy biking, baseball, swimming, road trips, and flight simulators.
Some updates
- Nov 2024: I will be serving on the PC of FOCS `25.
- August 2024:
Danny Sleator has transferred the ICPC portion of
Competition Programming and Problem Solving to me.
This is due to the changing nature of both ICPC and the broader
online programming competition/training environment.
- August 2023:
The latest iteration of my obsession with
tree-wielding artiodactyls
has taken me to Carnegie Mellon University.
I am grateful to the University of Waterloo for providing me with an academic home over the past few years of uncertainties, as well as over the past twenty years through CEMC and its extensions.
Students
Current
-
Junzhao Yang,
Ph.D. Fall 2024 - present @ CMU.
-
Alicia Stepin,
Ph.D. Fall 2024 - present @ CMU.
-
Hoai-An Nguyen,
Ph.D. co-advised with David P. Woodruff,
Fall 2023 - present @ CMU.
-
Jingbang Chen,
M.S. Fall 2020 - Fall 2022 @ Georgia Tech,
Ph.D. Fall 2022 - present @ Waterloo.
Former
-
Li Chen,
Ph.D. Fall 2019 - July 2023 @ Georgia Tech,
now at Meta Research Bellevue office.
-
Yu Gao,
Ph.D. Fall 2017 - May 2022 @ Georgia Tech,
now researcher at theory lab, Huawei technologies co. ltd.
-
Robert Schwieterman,
M.S. Fall 2017 - Spring 2018 @ Georgia Tech.
-
Saurabh Sawlani,
Ph.D. Fall 2016 - Spring 2020 @ Georgia Tech,
postdoc at Carnegie Mellon University, 2020 - 2021,
SoundHound 2021.
-
David Durfee,
Ph.D. Fall 2015 - Fall 2018 @ Georgia Tech,
LinkedIn 2019.
-
Peng Zhang,
PhD Fall 2015 - Summer 2018 @ Georgia Tech,
postdoc at Yale University 2018 - 2021,
Rutgers Univeristy 2021.