Papers

Publication

• The Isotonic Mechanism for Exponential Family Estimation in Machine Learning Peer Review
  Yuling Yan, Weijie J. Su, Jianqing Fan
  accepted to Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series B, 2025+
  

• O(d/T) Convergence Theory for Diffusion Probabilistic Models under Minimal Assumptions
  Gen Li*, Yuling Yan* (*=equal contribution)
  International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), 2025
  

• Learning Gaussian Mixtures Using the Wasserstein-Fisher-Rao Gradient Flow
  Yuling Yan*, Kaizheng Wang*, Philippe Rigollet (*=equal contribution)
  Annals of Statistics, vol. 52, no. 4, pp. 1774-1795, 2024
  

• Inference for Heteroskedastic PCA with Missing Data
  Yuling Yan, Yuxin Chen, Jianqing Fan
  Annals of Statistics, vol. 52, no. 2, pp. 729–756, 2024
  

• Adapting to Unknown Low-Dimensional Structures in Score-Based Diffusion Models
  Gen Li*, Yuling Yan* (*=equal contribution)
  Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2024
  

• Model-Based Reinforcement Learning for Offline Zero-Sum Markov Games
  Yuling Yan, Gen Li, Yuxin Chen, Jianqing Fan
  Operations Research, vol. 72, no.6, pp. 2430-2445, 2024
  

• Minimax-Optimal Reward-Agnostic Exploration in Reinforcement Learning
  Gen Li, Yuling Yan, Yuxin Chen, Jianqing Fan
  Conference on Learning Theory (COLT), 2024
  

• The Efficacy of Pessimism in Asynchronous Q-learning
  Yuling Yan, Gen Li, Yuxin Chen, Jianqing Fan
  IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 69, no. 11, pp. 7185-7219, 2023
  

• Convex and Nonconvex Optimization Are Both Minimax-Optimal for Noisy Blind Deconvolution
  Yuxin Chen, Jianqing Fan, Bingyan Wang, Yuling Yan (alphabetical order)
  Journal of the American Statistical Association, vol. 118, no. 542, pp. 858-868, 2023
  

• Bridging Convex and Nonconvex Optimization in Robust PCA: Noise, Outliers, and Missing Data
  Yuxin Chen, Jianqing Fan, Cong Ma, Yuling Yan (alphabetical order)
  Annals of Statistics, vol. 49, no. 5, pp. 2948-2971, 2021
  

• Sample-Efficient Reinforcement Learning for Linearly-Parameterized MDPs with a Generative Model
  Bingyan Wang*, Yuling Yan*, Jianqing Fan (*=equal contribution)
  Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2021
  

• Noisy Matrix Completion: Understanding Statistical Guarantees for Convex Relaxation via Nonconvex Optimization
  Yuxin Chen, Yuejie Chi, Jianqing Fan, Cong Ma, Yuling Yan (alphabetical order)
  SIAM Journal on Optimization, vol. 30, no. 4, pp. 3098-3121, 2020
  

• Efficient Clustering for Stretched Mixtures: Landscape and Optimality
  Kaizheng Wang, Yuling Yan, Mateo Díaz
  Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2020
  

• Asymptotic Seed Bias in Respondent-driven Sampling
  Yuling Yan, Bret Hanlon, Sebastien Roch, Karl Rohe
  Electronic Journal of Statistics, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 1577-1610, 2020
  

• Inference and Uncertainty Quantification for Noisy Matrix Completion
  Yuxin Chen, Jianqing Fan, Cong Ma, Yuling Yan (alphabetical order)
  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 116, no. 46, pp. 22931-22937, 2019
  

Preprints

• Analysis of the ICML 2023 Ranking Data: Can Authors’ Opinions of Their Own Papers Assist Peer Review in Machine Learning?
  Buxin Su, Jiayao Zhang, Natalie Collina, Yuling Yan, Didong Li, Kyunghyun Cho, Jianqing Fan, Aaron Roth, Weijie J. Su
  arXiv preprint arXiv:2408.13430, under revision at Journal of the American Statistical Association, 2025
  

• Minimax-Optimal Reward-Agnostic Exploration in Reinforcement Learning
  Gen Li, Yuling Yan, Yuxin Chen, Jianqing Fan
  arXiv preprint arXiv:2304.07278, under revision at Mathematics of Operations Research, 2025 (accepted in part to COLT 2024)
  

• O(d/T) Convergence Theory for Diffusion Probabilistic Models under Minimal Assumptions
  Gen Li*, Yuling Yan* (*=equal contribution)
  arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.18959, 2024 (accepted in part to ICLR 2025)
  

• Entrywise Inference for Missing Panel Data: A Simple and Instance-Optimal Approach
  Yuling Yan, Martin J. Wainwright
  arXiv preprint arXiv:2401.13665, 2024
  

• Inference under Staggered Adoption: Case Study of the Affordable Care Act
  Eric Xia*, Yuling Yan*, Martin J. Wainwright (*=equal contribution)
  arXiv preprint arXiv:2412.09482, 2024
  

• When Can Weak Latent Factors Be Statistically Inferred?
  Yuheng Zheng, Yuling Yan, Jianqing Fan (alphabetical order)
  arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.03616, 2024
  

• A Score-Based Density Formula, with Applications in Diffusion Generative Models
  Gen Li*, Yuling Yan* (*=equal contribution)
  arXiv preprint arXiv:2408.16765, 2024
  

• Adaptivity and Convergence of Probability Flow ODEs in Diffusion Generative Models
  Jiaqi Tang, Yuling Yan
  arXiv preprint arXiv:2501.18863, 2025
  

Others

• Statistical Learning and Optimal Decision Making under Uncertainty
  Yuling Yan
  Ph.D. thesis, Princeton University, 202