Yingying Wu

Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics, University of Houston
Harvard University ICPC Head Coach
ICPC North America Championship and Programming Camp Trainer

About me

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Houston. My research focuses on differential geometry, supersymmetry, computational geometry, and machine learning. I am particularly interested in low dimensional topology and differential geometry, especially Z/2 harmonic spinor and related geometry problems.

News: Haotian Zuo from Tongji University has accepted our PhD offer from the Department of Mathematics at the University of Houston and will join my group. Haotian specializes in Derived Categories, Toric Varieties, and Moduli Spaces of Vector Bundles. Welcome, Haotian!

Ads: I am looking for motivated Ph.D. students interested in differential geometry, algebraic geometry, and supersymmetry. Please send me your CV and transcript to ywu68@uh.edu if interested.

Research Interests

My research primarily focuses on eigenvalue problems in differential geometry and their extensions to discrete algorithms. I also work on the operads of moduli spaces of curves related to additional supersymmetric structures and the topological and combinatorial properties of their dual graphs. I work on building efficient feature representation and interpretability of machine learning algorithms. I am particularly interested in a data-driven approach to solve for the spectrum of the Laplace-Beltrami operator that enables deep neural networks to recognize global features of shapes and surfaces that were previously unseen using current state of the art computational techniques. Qualitative analysis of 3D data finds important applications in computer graphics, vision, and sensors, such as face recognition, medical image processing, and remote sensing. There are also various physical and cosmological applications that are naturally associated with geometric analysis and computation.

Competitive Programming

I have been the head coach for the Harvard’s International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) Teams. ICPC is the premiere global programming competition with annual participation reaching 111 countries, 3,450 universities, and 75,000 contestants, coaches and volunteers. I served as a judge for the ICPC Pacific Northwest Region Programming Contest, Rocky Mountain Regional Programming Contest, South Central USA Regional Programming Contest, North Central North America Regional Programming Contest, and Southern California Regional Programming Contest. I am very honored to be named as one of the trainers for the ICPC North American Championship Programming Camp, sponsored by NSIN, the National Security Agency, and DoD STEM. Lecture notes for Harvard ICPC training can be found here. Slides for ICPC North American Championship Programming Camp can be found here.