Yiyao Zhang

I am a third-year Ph.D. student in Computer Science at Nanjing University and a member of the Theory Group, advised by Prof. Yitong Yin. I earned my B.S. in Computer Science from Nanjing University in 2024.

Research Interests: Sampling and Counting; Learning Theory; Probability Theory

Education

Nanjing University

Ph.D. in Computer Science

Advisor: Prof. Yitong Yin

Nanjing University

B.S. in Computer Science

Publications

Authors are listed alphabetically unless otherwise stated.

Preprints

  1. An Õ(n2)-Time Sampler for Zero-Field Ferromagnetic Ising Models.

    Weiming Feng, Heng Guo, Yiyao Zhang.

    arXiv: 2609.26197. arXiv

  2. Optimal Simulated Annealing for Partition Function Estimation.

    Heng Guo, Hongyang Liu, Xiongxin Yang, Yitong Yin, Yiyao Zhang.

    arXiv: 2609.20337. arXiv

  3. Learning CNF Formulas from Uniform Random Solutions: Near-Tight Sample Complexity for Valiant's Algorithm.

    Weiming Feng, Yixiao Yu, Yiyao Zhang.

    arXiv: 2609.15268. arXiv

  4. A Counting and Sampling Lovász Local Lemma.

    Hongyang Liu, Chunyang Wang, Yitong Yin, Yiyao Zhang, Can Zhou.

    arXiv: 2608.08616. arXiv

Conference Papers

  1. Learning AC0 under Locally Sampleable Graphical Models.

    Weiming Feng, Xiongxin Yang, Yixiao Yu, Yiyao Zhang.

    SODA 2027, To appear. arXiv

  2. Near-Optimal Parallel Approximate Counting via Sampling.

    David G. Harris, Vladimir Kolmogorov, Hongyang Liu, Yitong Yin, Yiyao Zhang.

    SPAA 2026, pp. 550-559. Slides@SPAA Conference Version arXiv

  3. Learning CNF Formulas from Uniform Random Solutions in the Local Lemma Regime.

    Weiming Feng, Xiongxin Yang, Yixiao Yu, Yiyao Zhang.

    STOC 2026, pp. 478-488. Poster by Xiongxin Slides@STOC Conference Version arXiv

  4. Hyper-USS: Answering Subset Query over Multi-Attribute Data Stream.

    Ruijie Miao, Yiyao Zhang, Guanyu Qu, Kaicheng Yang, Tong Yang, Bin Cui. (by contribution)

    SIGKDD 2023, pp. 1698-1709. Conference Version

Talks

  1. Near-Optimal Parallel Approximate Counting via Sampling.

    SPAA 2026, London, UK.

  2. Learning CNF Formulas from Uniform Random Solutions in the Local Lemma Regime.

    STOC 2026, Salt Lake City, USA.

Visiting and Internship

The University of Hong Kong

Research assistant hosted by Asst. Prof. Weiming Feng.

Teaching Assistantship

Advanced Algorithms (Nanjing University)

Instructors: Yitong Yin, Shi Li, Jingcheng Liu.

Awards