About Me

I am a final-year PhD candidate in Computer Science at Victoria University of Wellington (VUW), supervised by Prof. Aaron Chen, Prof. Hui Ma, and Prof. Mengjie Zhang. Prior to my Ph.D., I obtained my M.S. in Logistics Engineering from Central South University (CSU), supervised by Prof. Jinjun Tang. I received the B.Eng in Logistics Engineering from Shannxi University of Science & Technology, China.

💖 Research Interests

My research centers on Learning to Optimize (L2O) with a focus on Neural Combinatorial Optimization (NCO) and AI-driven decision-making frameworks. I aim to bridge advanced machine learning techniques (e.g., Deep Reinforcement Learning and Graph Neural Networks) with challenging real-world optimization problems, particularly in scheduling and timetabling optimization. ☺️ Welcome contact me via 💌(yifanyang [at] ecs [dot] vuw [dot] ac [dot] nz) for communication and collaboration.

• Artificial Intelligence: Deep Reinforcement Learning, Evolutionary Computation
• Combinatorial Optimization: Scheduling, Timetabling, Routing
• Applications: Cloud Computing, Transportation, Logistics

🎉 News

• 2025.01:   “Graph Assisted Offline-Online Deep Reinforcement Learning for Dynamic Workflow Scheduling” has been accepted at ICLR 2025.