# Yang Liu

![Yang Liu](/resources/cognition/portraits/yang-liu.webp)

Researcher  
Cognition  
Pittsburgh, PA

## At Cognition

- Role: Researcher (Research)
- Joined: Not public
- How they joined: Directly
- Overlapped before Cognition with other Cognition people at: MIT TWO (MIT) 2018 (https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/worked-together)

## Identity
- X: @yangpliu
- Website: https://yangpliu.github.io/
- Domain: cognition.com

## Notes
- The competitive programmer desert97 (the handle tied to this profile) is listed on Codeforces as 'Yang Liu, St Louis, United States, From Stanford ACM', an International Grandmaster. Louis / MIT / Stanford trajectory of theorist Yang P. Liu; the tie to the Cognition researcher itself still rests on name and teammate overlap. (https://codeforces.com/profile/desert97)
- Yang P. Liu's academic homepage says he graduated from MIT in May 2018, earned a PhD at Stanford advised by Aaron Sidford, was a Postdoctoral Member at the Institute for Advanced Study, and is an Assistant Professor in CMU's Computer Science Department; this timeline (MIT ICPC 2018, Stanford ICPC 2019) matches desert97's contest history. (https://yangpliu.github.io/)
- Was on the US team that took first place at the 2015 International Mathematical Olympiad, alongside teammates including Shyam Narayanan and David Stoner (MAA FOCUS). (https://digitaleditions.walsworth.com/article/U.S.+Takes+First+in+International+Olympiad/2306585/278032/article.html)
- CMU faculty page credits Yang P. Liu with the A.W. Tucker Prize, a Google Ph.D. Research Fellowship, and Best (Student) Paper awards at FOCS, STOC and ITCS; his research covers graph algorithms, optimization, high-dimensional geometry and additive combinatorics. (https://csd.cmu.edu/people/faculty/yang-liu)
- Competed for Stanford University (Stanford Cardinal) at the ICPC 2019 World Finals with Eric Xu and Wenli Looi. (https://cphof.org/profile/topcoder:desert97)
- Gave the Princeton CS Colloquium 'Graphs, Optimization, Geometry, and Fast Algorithms' on 2023-04-10 (host Gillat Kol), covering maximum flow in almost-linear time, discrepancy minimization and linear regression. (https://lists.cs.princeton.edu/hyperkitty/list/talks@lists.cs.princeton.edu/message/XP55TJADPIFFJRK74554A4Q4LIWOG7BJ/)
- Placed 8th at CodeChef SnackDown 2019 as team 'moofest' with xiaowuc1. (https://cphof.org/profile/topcoder:desert97)
- Placed 15th at AtCoder Code Festival 2017 (prize JPY 12,283) and 10th in the Lyft Level 5 Challenge 2018, competing under the handle desert97 (AtCoder, Codeforces, CodeChef, Topcoder). (https://cphof.org/profile/topcoder:desert97)
- Yang P. Liu was supported by an NDSEG Fellowship (2018-2021) and a Google PhD Fellowship (2022-2023), and co-advises CMU student Hoai-An Nguyen with David Woodruff. (https://yangpliu.github.io/)

## Education
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology - (May 2018)
- Stanford University - PhD

## Sources
- https://cognition.com/blog/swe-1-7
- https://codeforces.com/profile/desert97
- https://yangpliu.github.io/
- https://csd.cmu.edu/people/faculty/yang-liu
- https://lists.cs.princeton.edu/hyperkitty/list/talks@lists.cs.princeton.edu/message/XP55TJADPIFFJRK74554A4Q4LIWOG7BJ/
- https://www.ams.org/notices/201507/rnoti-p824.pdf
- https://digitaleditions.walsworth.com/article/U.S.+Takes+First+in+International+Olympiad/2306585/278032/article.html
- https://cphof.org/profile/topcoder:desert97
- https://icpc.kattis.com/users/desert97
- https://x.com/yangpliu


Researched with Autumn (https://www.autumn.ai) from public sources. Updated 2026-11-04. Profile: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/people/yang-liu · Everyone at Cognition: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/people