Yifan Yang (杨易凡) Updated on July 2026
Yifan Yang (杨易凡) Updated on July 2026
Education
Education
Embedded Files
The Ohio State University May 2025
Ph.D., Operations Research
Thesis: Accurate and Fair Decision Making from Biased and Distributed Datasets
Advisor: Parinaz Naghizadeh
Georgia Institute of Technology Dec. 2018
M.Sc., Statistics
University of Washington, Seattle Jun. 2016
B.Sc., Mathematics, Economics
North Seattle College Jun. 2014
A.Sc., Mathematics
A Note About This Site
A Note About This Site
Going forward, updates here may be less frequent and somewhat irregular. As I move into a new chapter, this space will shift toward sharing personal highlights and moments, rather than primarily academic updates.
Recent news
Recent news
06/2026 Following a company-wide reorganization, I transitioned from the Research and Development (RAD) team to the Specialty Lines team. I support the development, pricing, and implementation of specialty insurance products, including GRV (GEICO Recreational Vehicle), GPS (GEICO PowerSport), and GBO (GEICO Boat). My work involves predictive GRID modeling, geospatial analysis, and state-specific implementation support.
03/2026 GEICO’s headquarters relocated from Chevy Chase to the Wilsons Building in Bethesda. The new office features a more modern design and provides employees with an improved working environment.
01/2026 My primary work focus shifted from supporting state-specific projects for GRV (GEICO Recreational Vehicle) to GRID-based insurance rating models for personal auto insurance. These models use detailed geospatial data (e.g., location, environmental, infrastructure, and demographic characteristics) to estimate expected insurance claim costs, known as pure premiums, for small geographic grid cells. This approach enables more granular and location-specific risk assessment than traditional ZIP-code- or territory-level analysis.
10/2025 Our paper "Enhancing Efficiency, Reducing Length of Stay and Costs in Pediatric Cardiology Rounds Through Simulation-Based Optimization" got accepted by the Applied Clinical Informatics.
08/2025 I officially graduated from the Ohio State University with a Ph.D. degree in Operations Research.
06/2025 I am excited to share that I have started my next chapter as a Research & Development Analyst III at GEICO.
04/2025 I am thrilled to share that I have successfully completed my Ph.D. Defense!
04/2025 I served as a Program Committee member for NeurIPS 2025.
03/2025 Our paper "Adaptive Bounded Exploration and Intermediate Actions for Data Debiasing" got accepted by the Informs Journal of Computing.
11/2024 I presented our work "Accurate and Fair Decision Making from Biased and Distributed Datasets" at ISE Colloquium.
10/2024 I gave a presentation about our research "Enhancing Group Fairness in Federated Learning through Personalization" at INFORMS 2024 in Seattle, WA.
10/2024 I served as a Program Committee member for ICLR 2025 and AISTAT 2025.
10/2024 Our INFORMS@OSU Student Chapter has been selected as a winner of the 2024 Student Chapter Annual Award as a Summa Cum Laude. [link]
05/2024 I started working as a Research Intern at Nationwide Children's Hospital.
04/2024 I started a new chapter in my life's journey - Fatherhood.
04/2024 I won fifth prize in a personal website competition held by OSU INFORMS.
11/2023 I served as a Program Committee member for AISTAT 2024.
10/2023 I served as Session Chair of "Advancing Explainable Machine Learning" in the INFORMS 2023 Annual Meeting
10/2023 I gave a presentation about our research "Generalization Error Bound for Learning with Censored Feedback" at INFORMS 2023 in Phoenix AZ.
09/2023 Our INFORMS@OSU Student Chapter has been selected as a winner of the 2023 Student Chapter Annual Award as a Magna Cum Laude. [link]
06/2023 I presented our work "Generalization Error Bound for Learning with Censored Feedback" as a poster at NASIT in UPenn.
05/2023 I received a travel grant award from the 2023 North American School of Information Theory (NASIT)
04/2023 I have been selected to be featured on the department website. [link]
02/2023 I served as a Program Committee member for FAccT 2023.
11/2022 I presented our paper "Adaptive Data Debiasing through Bounded Exploration" as a poster at NeurIPS 2022 in New Orleans.
11/2022 I was a group leader for High School Outreach Program to empower high school students to engage with AI and show them how AI/ML impacts their daily life. [link]
11/2022 I passed my Ph.D. Candidacy Exam.
10/2022 I gave a presentation about our research "Adaptive Data Debiasing through Bounded Exploration and Fairness" at INFORMS 2022 in Indianapolis IN.
10/2022 I received a scholar award from NeurIPS, which covers an in-person registration fee and up to a 7 nights hotel stay. [link]
09/2022 Our paper "Adaptive Data Debiasing through Bounded Exploration" got accepted by NeurIPS 2022 (acceptance rate: 25.6%)
08/2022 I started working as a Software Engineering Intern at Cisco company.
07/2022 I got married to my wife Yuxuan Xin.
07/2022 I presented our workshop paper "Adaptive Data Debiasing through Bounded Exploration" at ICML Workshop on Responsible Decision Making in Dynamic Environment in Baltimore.
05/2021 I passed my Ph.D. Qualifying Exam.
Publication (Google Scholar)
Conference and Workshop Papers
Yang, Y., Liu, Y., Naghizadeh, P., "Adaptive Data Debiasing Through Bounded Exploration". Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), New Orleans, Dec. 2022. (acceptance rate: 25.6%). [link]
Yang, Y., Liu, Y., Naghizadeh, P., "Adaptive Data Debiasing Through Bounded Exploration". ICML Workshop on Responsible Decision Making in Dynamic Environment (ICML Workshop), Maryland, July 2022. [link]
Journal Papers
Yang, Y., Silvio F., Thipkanok W., Xu Zhang., Jeffery H., Jessica B. and Yungui H., "Enhancing Efficiency, Reducing Length of Stay and Costs in Pediatric Cardiology Rounds Through Simulation-Based Optimization". Applied Clinical Informatics (ACI), Vol. 16, No. 5, 2025: 1761-1770.
Yang, Y., Liu, Y., Naghizadeh, P., "Adaptive Bounded Exploration and Intermediate Actions for Data Debiasing". Informs Journal of Computing (IJOC), 2025. [link]
Lu, Jye-Chyi, Yifan Yang, Shu-Yi Han, Yu-Chung Tsao, and Yuxuan Xin. "Coordinated inventory policies for meeting demands from both store and online BOPS channels". Computers & Industrial Engineering (CAIE) 145 (2020): 106542. [link]
Arxiv / Pre-prints
Yang, Y., Payani A., Naghizadeh P., "Generalization Error Bound for Learning with Censored Feedback". arXiv preprint arXiv:2404.09247, 2025.
Yang, Y., Payani A., Naghizadeh P., "Friends in Unexpected Places: Enhancing Local Fairness in Federated Learning through Clustering". arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.19331, 2025.
Invited Talks
"Enhancing Group Fairness in Federated Learning through Personalization". INFORMS 2024 Annual Meeting, Personalized and Fair AI: Advances in Federated Learning and LLMs Contributed Session. Seattle, WA, Oct. 2024.
"Generalization Error Bound for Learning with Censored Feedback". INFORMS 2023 Annual Meeting, Advancing Explainable Machine Learning Invited Session. Phoenix, AZ, Oct. 2023.
"Adaptive Data Debiasing through Bounded Exploration and Fairness". INFORMS 2022 Annual Meeting, ML/AI for Fairness, Transparency, and Interpretability Invited Session. Indianapolis, IN, Oct. 2022.
Working Experience (LinkedIn)
GEICO
Research & Development Analyst III Bethesda, MD Jun. 2025 - present
The Ohio State University
Graduate Research Associate Columbus, OH Feb. 2020 - May 2025
Graduate Teaching Associate Columbus, OH Aug. 2024 - Dec. 2024
Vice President of OSU INFORMS Student Chapter Columbus, OH Sept. 2021 - May 2024
Nationwide Children's Hospital
Research Intern Columbus, OH May. 2024 - Aug. 2024
Cisco Research
Software Engineer III PhD Intern San Jose, CA (Remotely) Sept. 2022 - Dec. 2022
Georgia Institute of Technology
Project Research Specialist Intern supervised by Jye-Chyi Lu Atlanta, GA Jan. 2019 - Dec. 2019
J.P. Morgan Chase Bank
Teller and ATM Custodian Seattle, WA June. 2016 - Apr. 2017
University of Washington, Seattle
Undergraduate Calculus Tutor at MSC Seattle, WA Jan. 2015 - June. 2016
Awards and Honors
2024 Student Chapter Annual Award as Summa Cum Laude awarded by the National INFORMS organization
2023 Student Chapter Annual Award as Magna Cum Laude awarded by the National INFORMS organization
Travel grant award awarded by the 2023 North American School of Information Theory [link]
2022 NeurIPS scholar award by Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems [link]
Scholarship awarded in 2020 Spring by both The Ohio State University and Integrated System Engineering
Annual Dean's List high-scholarship awarded in 2015 - 2016 by University of Washington
The 2nd prize in 13rd National Essay Competition awarded by CCNU China
Service
Vice President of the INFORMS Student Chapter at The Ohio State University from Sept. 2021 to May 2024. [link]
Session Chair: Advancing Explainable Machine Learning session chair in the INFORMS 2023 Annual Meeting.
Group leader for NeurIPS 2022 High School Outreach Program [link]
Reviewer for Conferences: IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT); FAccT 2023; AISTAT 2024, 2025; ICLR 2025; NeurIPS 2025
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