Zixian Yang

I am a Machine Learning Engineer at Philo Homes.

I will join the Department of Computer Science at Texas State University as an Assistant Professor in Fall 2026.

I am working on machine learning for AI-driven interior design, including developing reinforcement learning algorithms for furniture placement. My research interests lie in joint online learning and decision making problems, which include recommendation, queueing, scheduling, matching, and pricing in unknown stochastic environments.

Previously, I was a postdoctoral research fellow in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where I worked with Prof. Lei Ying. I also received my Ph.D. from the same department under Prof. Ying’s supervision. I earned my master's and bachelor's degrees from Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China.

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News

[May-2026] I will join the Department of Computer Science at Texas State University as an Assistant Professor in Fall 2026.

[Nov-2025] I will attend NeurIPS 2025 in San Diego and present our work Near-Optimal Regret-Queue Length Tradeoff in Online Learning for Two-Sided Markets. Dec 3 (Wednesday) 4:30-7:30 p.m., Exhibit Hall C,D,E #916.

Selected Publications

[1] Zixian Yang, Sushil Mahavir Varma, and Lei Ying, "Near-Optimal Regret-Queue Length Tradeoff in Online Learning for Two-Sided Markets," in NeurIPS 2025 (acceptance rate 25%). link of the paper

[2] Zixian Yang and Lei Ying, "Learning-based pricing and matching for two-sided queues", Stochastic Systems, 2025. link of the paper

[3] Zixian Yang, R. Srikant, and Lei Ying, "Learning While Scheduling in Multi-Server Systems with Unknown Statistics: MaxWeight with Discounted UCB," in AISTATS 2023 (acceptance rate 29%). link of the paper

[4] Zixian Yang, Xin Liu, and Lei Ying. "Exploration. Exploitation, and Engagement in Multi-Armed Bandits with Abandonment." Journal of Machine Learning Research, 2024. link of the paper

[5] Honghao Wei, Zixian Yang, Xin Liu, Zhiwei Qin, Xiaocheng Tang, and Lei Ying. "A Reinforcement Learning and Prediction-Based Lookahead Policy for Vehicle Repositioning in Online Ride-Hailing Systems." IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 2023. link of the paper

Papers Under Review

Zixian Yang, R. Srikant, and Lei Ying, “Learning While Scheduling in Multi-Server Systems with Unknown Statistics: MaxWeight with Discounted UCB,” 2023, available at https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.01126v3

Book

Zixian Yang and Lei Ying, Introduction to Reinforcement Learning. The book is available here. The code is available here.

It is an introductory book on reinforcement learning, featuring examples and code demonstrations.

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