Yang Cai is a Professor of Computer Science and Economics (secondary appointment) at Yale University. He is the Co-Director of the Center for Algorithms, Data, & Market Design at Yale (CADMY) and a member of the Institute for Foundations of Data Science (FDS).

Interests
  • Theory of Computation
  • Economics & Computation
  • Optimization
  • Learning
Education

  • Ph.D. in Computer Science, 2013

    MIT

  • B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2008

    Peking University

Selected Publications

Yang Cai, Constantinos Daskalakis, Haipeng Luo, Chen-Yu Wei, Weiqiang Zheng (2026). Proximal Regret and Proximal Correlated Equilibria: A New Tractable Solution Concept for Online Learning and Games . Proceedings of the 58th Annual ACM SIGACT Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC).

arxiv

Yang Cai, Alkis Kalavasis, Katerina Mamali, Anay Mehrotra, Manolis Zampetakis (2025). What Makes Treatment Effects Identifiable? Characterizations and Estimators Beyond Unconfoundedness. The 38th Annual Conference on Learning Theory (COLT) — 🏆 Best Paper Award.

arxiv

Yang Cai, Constantinos Daskalakis, Haipeng Luo, Chen-Yu Wei, Weiqiang Zheng (2024). On Tractable Φ-Equilibria in Non-Concave Games. The 38th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS).

arxiv

Yang Cai, Argyris Oikonomou, Weiqiang Zheng (2022). Finite-Time Last-Iterate Convergence for Learning in Multi-Player Games. The 36th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS Oral).

PDF Video

Yang Cai, Nikhil R. Devanur, S. Matthew Weinberg (2021). A Duality-Based Unified Approach to Bayesian Mechanism Design. SIAM Journal on Computing.

PDF DOI

Johannes Brustle, Yang Cai, Fa Wu, Mingfei Zhao (2017). Approximating Gains from Trade in Two-sided Markets via Simple Mechanisms. Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (EC).

PDF DOI arXiv

Yang Cai, Mingfei Zhao (2017). Simple mechanisms for subadditive buyers via duality. Proceedings of the 49th Annual ACM SIGACT Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC).

PDF DOI arXiv SIGecom Exchange

Yang Cai, Constantinos Daskalakis, Christos Papadimitriou (2015). Optimum Statistical Estimation with Strategic Data Sources. The 28th Annual Conference on Learning Theory (COLT).

PDF arXiv

Yang Cai, Constantinos Daskalakis, S. Matthew Weinberg (2012). Optimal Multi-dimensional Mechanism Design: Reducing Revenue to Welfare Maximization. Proceedings of the 53rd IEEE Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS).
🏆 FOCS 2022 Test of Time Award.

PDF DOI arXiv

Recent Publications

Yang Cai, Weiqiang Zheng (2026). Asymptotic Universal Alignment: A New Alignment Framework via Test-Time Scaling. The 43rd International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML).

arxiv

Yixin Liu, Argyris Oikonomou, Weiqiang Zheng, Yang Cai, Arman Cohan (2026). COMAL: A Convergent Meta-Algorithm for Aligning LLMs with General Preferences. The 14th International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR).

arxiv

Yang Cai, Haipeng Luo, Chen-Yu Wei, Weiqiang Zheng (2025). From Average-Iterate to Last-Iterate Convergence in Games: A Reduction and Its Applications. The 39th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS).

arxiv

Yang Cai, Kshipra Bhawalkar, Zhe Feng, Christopher Liaw, Tao Lin (2025). A Unified Approach to Submodular Maximization Under Noise. The 39th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS).

arxiv

Yang Cai, Siddharth Mitra, Xiuyuan Wang, Andre Wibisono (2025). On the Convergence of Min-Max Langevin Dynamics and Algorithm. The 38th Annual Conference on Learning Theory (COLT).

arxiv

Yang Cai, Gabriele Farina, Julien Grand-Clément, Christian Kroer, Chung-Wei Lee, Haipeng Luo, Weiqiang Zheng (2025). Last-Iterate Convergence Properties of Regret-Matching Algorithms in Games. The 13th International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR).

arxiv

Yang Cai, Gabriele Farina, Julien Grand-Clément, Christian Kroer, Chung-Wei Lee, Haipeng Luo, Weiqiang Zheng (2024). Fast Last-Iterate Convergence of Learning in Games Requires Forgetful Algorithms. The 38th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS).

arxiv

See all publications

Teaching

CPSC 366: Intensive Algorithms. Spring 2021, Spring 2020, Spring 2019.

CPSC 455 / 555 ECON 425: Economics and Computation. Fall 2024, Fall 2022, Fall 2020, Fall 2019.

CPSC 612: Topics in Algorithmic Game Theory: Learning and Games. Spring 2026, Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023.

Contact

  • yang.cai@yale.edu
  • Room 338, 17 Hillhouse Avenue, New Haven, CT 06511