Yifan Zhao

Yifan Zhao

Computer Science Ph.D. Student

Univ. of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

About me

I am a Ph.D. student in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

I am co-advised by Prof. Sasa Misailovic and Prof. Vikram S. Adve.

My research is in compilers and programming systems for efficient AI.

I am broadly interested in compilers and programming systems for AI workloads, from DNN operators to compound AI systems. My work asks how we can let programmers express computations at a high level while still generating high-performance code across diverse platforms, and how compiler optimization itself can become more adaptive as hardware and models continue to change. I also study accuracy-aware optimization, where performance must be balanced with application-level quality.

See my recent projects and CV for more details.

Interests

  • Efficient AI
  • Programming Languages and Compilers
  • Approximate Computing

Education

  • Ph.D. in Computer Science, 2019 - Now

    University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  • BSE in Computer Science Engineering, 2017 - 2019

    University of Michigan

  • BSE in Electrical and Computer Engineering, 2015 - 2019

    Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Recent Posts

Paper "Neptune" ♆ accepted at PLDI'26!

Our work “Neptune: Advanced ML Operator Fusion for Locality and Parallelism on GPUs” is recently accepted by PLDI 2026.

Paper accepted at ASPLOS'24!

Our work “Felix: Optimizing Tensor Programs with Gradient Descent” was accepted by ASPLOS 2024. Now you may just be able to optimize your DNN in minutes, instead of hours!

Selected Publications

Neptune: Advanced ML Operator Fusion for Locality and Parallelism on GPUs

Felix: Optimizing Tensor Programs with Gradient Descent

Huron: Hybrid False Sharing Detection and Repair

Experience

 
 
 
 
 

Ph.D. student

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Aug 2019 – Present Champaign, IL
 
 
 
 
 

Research Assistant

University of Michigan

May 2018 – Aug 2018 Ann Arbor, MI
Advised by Prof. Baris Kasikci, co-authored with Tanvir Ahmed Khan.
 
 
 
 
 

Undergraduate

University of Michigan

Aug 2017 – May 2019 Ann Arbor, MI
 
 
 
 
 

Undergraduate

Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Sep 2015 – Aug 2019 Shanghai, China