About me

Hi, I’m Jifan! I’m a fourth-year PhD student of Statistics and Data Science at Northwestern University. I’m advised by Prof. Miklos Racz. I received my Bachelor’s degree in Pure and applied mathmatics from Tsinghua University in 2021, where I worked with Prof. Qian Lin.

Research Interest

I am broadly interested in statistics, probabilistic combinatorics, and computer science, with a focus on graph theory and data mining.

My theoretical research centers on probabilistic generative graph models, such as the stochastic block model, and studies inference tasks like graph matching, community recovery, and latent structure recovery. Specifically, I explore how multiple (correlated) networks can be leveraged to enhance inference tasks, evaluating how integrating information across graphs can improve outcomes in graph matching and community recovery.

On the empirical side, I focus on Graph Neural Networks and advanced machine learning models designed for graph-structured data. I studied uncertainty quantification for spatio-temporal graphs, with guaranteed coverage for high-dimensional predictions. Additionally, I am investigating how GNNs can be employed for better causal representation learning.

News

I’m actively seeking an internship for summer 2025 for Tech/Quant positions! Feel free to contact me if you have any connections, advice or opportunities you can offer. Thanks!

Other

In my spare time, I like playing badmintons, table tennis and I have two cats, Melon and Sherry.