Zixian Yang

I am an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science at Texas State University

My research interests lie in 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

[Sep-2026] I paln to attend the 2026 INFORMS annual meeting in San Francisco.

Prospective Ph.D. Students

I am recruiting fully funded Ph.D. students to join my research group starting Fall 2027. I especially encourage applications from candidates who:

Hold or expect to receive a bachelor's or master's degree in Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Operations Research, Applied Mathematics, Statistics, or another related field;
Have a strong background in probability and stochastic processes; and
Have strong programming and problem-solving skills.

If you are interested, please email me at zixian@txstate.edu with your CV and transcripts.

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. 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. 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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