Yang Liu

Yang P. Liu is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University (since Jan 2025), previously a postdoctoral member at the Institute for Advanced Study (2023-2024). He completed a Ph.D. in Mathematics at Stanford under Aaron Sidford (2023) and a B.S. in Mathematics at MIT (2018). His research spans graph algorithms, optimization, high-dimensional geometry and additive combinatorics, including 'Maximum Flow and Minimum-Cost Flow in Almost Linear Time' (Best Paper, FOCS 2022). Honors include the NSF CAREER Award (2026), the A.W. Tucker Prize (2024) and the Trevisan Prize (2025). He represented the USA at the IMO, winning gold in 2014 and 2015. His only public quant-finance lead is a self-reported Jane Street Trading Internship (summer 2017).

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• Identity resolution: the IMO 2014/2015 USA gold medalist is Yang P. Liu (publishes under 'Yang P. Liu'); his own CV lists IMO gold 2014 and 2015 and he is Assistant Professor of CS at Carnegie Mellon. This unifies the LinkedIn lead, the IMO record and the CMU faculty page into one person.Jan 2025
• Quant employment verification: CONFIRMED. Identity is supported (IMO-official record + his own CV + CMU faculty page all align to Yang P. Liu). The only employment lead is a self-reported 'Trading Intern, Jane Street, May 2017 - Aug 2017 (New York City)' on his LinkedIn profile (index-derived, not independent primary-source confirmation); it is an actual internship, not a competition, camp, insight day or scholarship. Jane Street is a genuine quantitative trading firm / market maker (Financial Services, domain janestreet.com), so it classifies as a real quant-finance role. No evidence of any hedge-fund, bank, asset-manager, energy or crypto trading role was found; his CV and personal site do not list Jane Street, so the role rests on self-report and the uncertainty of that single source is retained.
• Current role: Assistant Professor, Computer Science Department, Carnegie Mellon University, since Jan 2025; research in graph algorithms, optimization, high-dimensional geometry and additive combinatorics (previously postdoctoral member at IAS 2023-2024).Jan 2025
• Identity anchor: the caller-supplied LinkedIn (yang-liu-31b61a113) self-describes 'Participated in the International Math Olympiad for the United States, and won a gold medal', matching the IMO-official record for Yang Liu USA - so it is the olympiad Yang Liu, not a namesake. This is profile/self-reported data (index-derived), used only to knit identities together.
• Received an NSF CAREER Award (announced Jul 15, 2026) for advancing the mathematical foundations of algorithms, optimization and data analysis - the award typically signals an early-career faculty trajectory past the tenure-review midpoint.Jul 15, 2026
• PhD in Mathematics, Stanford University (Sep 2018-May 2023), advised by Aaron Sidford; B.S. Mathematics MIT, graduated May 2018 (GPA 4.9/5.0).May 2023
• His FOCS 2022 Best Paper 'Maximum Flow and Minimum-Cost Flow in Almost Linear Time' (Chen, Kyng, Liu, Peng, Probst Gutenberg, Sachdeva) drew mainstream coverage, incl. Quanta's 'Absurdly Fast Algorithm for Network Flow' (2022-06-08) and ScienceDaily - press built on the algorithm's near-linear runtime claim rather than an application.Jun 8, 2022
• IMO-official participant record: Yang Liu competed for the United States in 2015 (gold, rank 10, 31 pts) and 2014 (gold, rank 28, 32 pts).Jul 2015
• Public contact email [contact omitted] is published on his own CV and personal site (the canonical way to reach him academically).
• A.W. Tucker Prize (2024) from the Mathematical Optimization Society for best thesis, plus the Trevisan Prize (2025) and Best Paper at FOCS 2025 (two papers) - a run of top-theory recognitions clustering around flow/graph algorithms and CSP approximability.2025
• Funding history: NDSEG Graduate Fellowship 2018-2021 and Google PhD Fellowship 2022-2023, both supporting his Stanford PhD.2022
• Served as USA IMO Deputy Leader in 2019 (US tied China for 1st, 227 pts) and again in 2025 - a coaching/official role distinct from his competitor years and from any employment.Jul 2019