Yifan Yu is an Assistant Professor of the Department of Information, Risk, and Operations Management at the McCombs School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin. He received bachelor's and master's degrees in Management Science and Engineering at the School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University, and a Ph.D. degree in Information Systems at Michael G. Foster School of Business, University of Washington.

His research centers on (1) the economics of artificial intelligence and machine learning; (2) business analytics leveraging online unstructured data (i.e., text, images, videos, networks, behavioral sequences); and (3) data analytics to facilitate volunteerism, charity, and sustainable operations. He applies machine/deep learning, network analysis, econometric/game-theoretical modeling, and experimental methods to tackle questions in these fields. He has published in top journals in the area of Information Systems (Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly, and Management Science) and received several best paper awards or nominations at the top Information Systems conferences (e.g., INFORMS, CIST, and WITS). 

His teaching experience includes machine learning, data science, data management, and business data communication. He taught both undergraduate- and master-level courses. He received teaching awards from the Ph.D. program of the Foster School of Business (in 2022) and from the Department of Information Systems and Operations Management (in 2021) at University of Washington.

He had research collaborations with several large-scale tech companies (e.g., Amazon and WeChat), working as an applied or research scientist. Before he started a career in academic research, he worked as a consultant or investment manager in management consulting firms (BCG, Roland Berger, and Deloitte), venture capital, and private equity companies. Besides, he established an online platform company with two partners in 2015 and worked as an entrepreneur for around two years. He enjoys volunteer work. He worked as the president of the Tsinghua Cyrus Tang Volunteer Association from 2014 to 2015. He received the Top 10 Volunteers of Tsinghua Graduate Students award in 2017.