Yitong Qiu

About Me

I am an incoming Ph.D. student in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research (IEOR) at Columbia University. I am currently completing my B.S. in Mathematics at the School of the Gifted Young, University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), as a member of the Hua Loo-Keng Talent Program in Mathematics.

My research interests lie at the intersection of machine learning, applied probability, and optimization.

Research Interests

• Theoretical Machine Learning
• Diffusion Models
• Reinforcement Learning

Publications & Preprints

1. Yitong Qiu, Jifa Jiang, and Jianliang Zhai.
   Freidlin-Wentzell Uniform Large Deviation Principles for Degenerate Chain Diffusions with Unbounded Coefficients.
   Manuscript in preparation.

2. Ye He, Yitong Qiu, and Molei Tao.
   Diffusion Model’s Generalization Can Be Characterized by Inductive Biases toward a Data-Dependent Ridge Manifold.
   Preprint, 2026. [arXiv]

Education

• Columbia University, New York, NY
  Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, incoming Fall 2026

• University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China
  School of the Gifted Young
  B.S. in Mathematics, Hua Loo-Keng Talent Program in Mathematics, 2022–2026
  

Selected Honors

• Outstanding Student Scholarship (First-Class), USTC, 2025
• Meritorious Winner (Top 10%), Interdisciplinary Contest in Modeling, 2025
• Alibaba Global Mathematics Competition Finalist (Global Rank 109), 2024
• Excellent Teaching Assistant Award, USTC, 2024

Contact

The best way to reach me is by email at yq2463 (at) columbia.edu. You can also find me on GitHub.

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