PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Christina Lee Yu

Christina Lee Yu is a Cornell researcher whose work develops statistical methods for causal inference over networks. She earned a BS in computer science at Caltech in 2011 and MS and PhD degrees in electrical engineering and computer science at MIT in 2013 and 2017; she worked as a postdoc at Microsoft Research New England in May 2018. Her 2017 paper used statistical reduction to link crowdsourcing with graphon estimation, and in 2022 she coauthored a study of treatment effects under unknown network structure. She received the NSF CAREER and ACM SIGMETRICS Rising Star awards in 2024 and joined Amazon as a Scholar in Fulfillment Optimization in April 2025. Since July 2026, she is an associate professor of Operations Research and Information Engineering at Cornell.

Works
49
Citations
226
h-index
10
Badges

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 27 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 2011

    A Caltech computer science degree

    She earns a BS in computer science at the California Institute of Technology in 2011.

  2. 2013–2017

    MIT and information systems

    At MIT, she earns an MS in electrical engineering and computer science in 2013 and completes a PhD in 2017 in the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems.

  3. 2017

    Graphon estimation for crowdsourcing

    Her 2017 paper, “Reducing Crowdsourcing to Graphon Estimation, Statistically,” uses a statistical reduction from crowdsourcing to graphon estimation to advance both areas.

  4. May 2018

    A postdoc at Microsoft Research

    In May 2018, she is a postdoctoral researcher at Microsoft Research New England and serves as a poster chair for New England Machine Learning Day.

  5. 2022

    Estimating treatment effects

    She coauthors a 2022 PNAS paper on total treatment effects in randomized experiments when network structure is unknown. The paper shows that historical baseline data can support an unbiased, low-variance estimate without measuring the network.

  6. 2024

    An NSF CAREER grant

    She receives an NSF CAREER grant in 2024 for work on randomized experimentation, optimal experimental design and causal inference under network and time-varying interference.

  7. June 2024

    A SIGMETRICS Rising Star Award

    She receives the 2024 ACM SIGMETRICS Rising Star Research Award for contributions at the interface of learning, control and information theory.

  8. April 2025

    An Amazon Scholar role

    In April 2025, she joins Amazon as a Scholar in Fulfillment Optimization.

  9. Since July 2026

    Associate professor at Cornell

    In July 2026, she becomes an associate professor in Cornell's School of Operations Research and Information Engineering.

Career

  1. Since 2026Cornell UniversityAssociate professor, School of Operations Research and Information Engineering
  2. Since 2025AmazonScholar in Fulfillment Optimization
  3. 2019–2020Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  4. Microsoft ResearchPostdoctoral researcher

Education

  1. 2017Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyPhD in electrical engineering and computer science, Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems
  2. 2013Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyMS in electrical engineering and computer science
  3. 2011California Institute of TechnologyBS in computer science

From the biography and OpenAlex affiliations (the years of papers that list the organization), so some years are approximate.

Checked career sources: cleeyu.orie.cornell.edu.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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  1. Christina Lee Yu | Cornell Duffield Engineering duffield.cornell.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  2. Reducing Crowdsourcing to Graphon Estimation, Statistically arxiv.org. Checked 27 October 2026.
  3. New England Machine Learning Day 2018 - Microsoft Research microsoft.com. Checked 27 October 2026.
  4. Estimating Total Treatment Effect in Randomized Experiments with Unknown Network Structure arxiv.org. Checked 27 October 2026.
  5. Christina Lee Yu cleeyu.orie.cornell.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  6. Six early-career professors win NSF development awards | Cornell Chronicle news.cornell.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  7. Dr. Christina Lee Yu Wins the 2024 ACM SIGMETRICS Rising Star Research Award sigmetrics.hosting.acm.org. Checked 27 October 2026.