Fan Yao

Fan Yao

PhD student at CS@UVa

University of Virginia

Biography

I am a final-year PhD candidate in CS at UVa and will be joining STOR at UNC as a tenure-track assistant professor. My advisors are Prof. Haifeng Xu and Prof. Hongning Wang. Currently I’m interested in modeling human-AI interactions, with the goal of understanding their societal implications and designing interventions that promote social good. If you are interested in collaboration, feel free to drop an email!

Download my resumé.

Interests
  • Social aspects of AI
  • Multi-agent modeling
  • Algorithmic game theory
  • Online learning
Education
  • Ph.D. in Computer Science, 2025

    University of Virginia

  • MSc. in Computational Mathematics, 2016

    Peking University

  • BSc. in Computational Mathematics, 2013

    Peking University

Working Papers

indicates equal contribution, authors in alphabetical order.
Policy Design for Two-sided Platforms with Participation Dynamics
The Complexity of Tullock Contests
Strategic Filtering for Content Moderation: Free Speech or Free of Distortion?

Publications

indicates equal contribution, authors in alphabetical order.
(2024). Single-Agent Poisoning Attacks Suffice to Ruin Multi-Agent Learning.
ICLR, 2025.

PDF Source Document

(2024). Unveiling User Satisfaction and Creator Productivity Trade-Offs in Recommendation Platforms.
Neurips, 2024.

PDF Video Source Document

(2024). Human vs Generative AI in Content Creation Competition: Symbiosis or Conflict?.
ICML, 2024
Oral presented at Econometric Society Interdisciplinary Frontiers (ESIF) conference on Economics and AI+ML.

PDF Source Document

(2024). User Welfare Optimization in Recommender Systems with Competing Content Creators.
KDD, 2024.

PDF Source Document

(2023). Rethinking Incentives in Recommender Systems: Are Monotone Rewards Always Beneficial?.
Neurips, 2023.

PDF Source Document

(2023). How Bad is Top- Recommendation under Competing Content Creators?.
ICML, 2023 (oral presentation, 2.4%).

PDF Video Source Document

(2022). Learning from a Learning User for Optimal Recommendations.
ICML, 2022
Selected as spotlight presentation at ICML, 2023, Workshop on Interactive Learning with Implicit Human Feedback.

PDF Cite Source Document

(2022). Multi-Agent Learning for Iterative Dominance Elimination: Formal Barriers and New Algorithms.
COLT, 2022
Extended version under major revision at JMLR.

PDF Cite Source Document

(2022). Learning the Optimal Recommendation from Explorative Users.
AAAI, 2022.

PDF Cite Source Document

(2021). PAC-Learning for Strategic Classification.
The Journal of Machine Learning Research (JMLR)
Shorter version at ICML, 2021 (oral presentation, 3%).

PDF Cite Poster Video Source Document

Experience

 
 
 
 
 
University of Virginia
Graduate Research Assistant
Aug 2019 – Present Charlottesville, US
Ph.D. candidate in CS department
 
 
 
 
 
University of Chicago
Visiting Student
May 2023 – Present Chicago, IL
Multi-agent and economic modeling for online content market.
 
 
 
 
 
Meta Research
Student Researcher
Dec 2023 – Jul 2024 Menlo Park, CA
  • Host: Dr. Qifan Wang
  • Deploy mechanism design solutions for improving user engagement on Instagram Reels.
 
 
 
 
 
Google Research
Student Researcher
May 2022 – Sep 2022 Mountain View, CA
  • Manager: Dr. Chih-wei Hsu, Dr. Craig Boutilier
  • Bayesian preference elicitation in interactive recommender systems using Concept Activation Vectors.
 
 
 
 
 
ByteDance (TikTok) AML Lab
Research Intern
May 2021 – Aug 2021 Seattle, WA (remote)
  • Manager: Dr. Chong Wang, Dr. Taiqing Wang
  • Enhance the recommendation diversity and mitigate the echo chamber effect via collaborative Thompson sampling approach and gradient-based Determinantal Point Processes.
 
 
 
 
 
Alibaba Group, Taobao Recommendation Team
Algorithm Engineer
Jul 2017 – Aug 2019 Hangzhou, China
Design and maintain content recommendation system for Taobao main page, focusing on deep-learning based match and ranking solution.

Featured Publications

Contact