PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Yuchen Wu

Yuchen Wu is an assistant professor in Cornell’s School of Operations Research and Information Engineering whose research connects statistical learning with generative AI. She earned a mathematics degree at Tsinghua, completed a statistics PhD at Stanford with Andrea Montanari, and worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Wharton. Her papers have studied high-dimensional matrix estimation, guidance in diffusion models, and efficient posterior sampling for sparse regression. Since joining Cornell in July 2025, she studies diffusion models and learning from machine-generated data. In 2026, she coauthored a preprint on score-entropy discrete diffusion.

Works
24
Citations
60
h-index
4

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 27 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 2018

    Mathematics at Tsinghua

    She grows up in Wuhan and develops an interest in mathematics through high-school competitions. In 2018, she completes a mathematics degree at Tsinghua University, where she begins exploring statistics.

  2. 2021–2023

    A Stanford statistics PhD

    In 2021, she is a PhD student in Stanford’s Department of Statistics. She earns her PhD there in 2023 under Andrea Montanari.

  3. 2022–2024

    Limits of low-rank estimation

    With Andrea Montanari, she studies estimating low-rank matrix factors under Gaussian noise. Their 2022 preprint characterizes minimum estimation error in high-dimensional settings, and the work appears in Annals of Statistics in 2024.

  4. 2024

    Theoretical insights for diffusion guidance

    At ICML 2024, she and four coauthors study guidance for diffusion models in Gaussian mixture models. They show that stronger guidance reduces the diversity of generated samples, measured through output entropy.

  5. 2024–2026

    Posterior sampling for sparse regression

    In 2024, she and Andrea Montanari introduce a method for posterior sampling in sparse regression that decomposes multimodal posteriors into log-concave mixtures of simple product measures. Their paper appears in the Journal of the American Statistical Association in 2026.

  6. May 2025

    A postdoc at Wharton

    In May 2025, she is a postdoctoral researcher in Wharton’s Department of Statistics and Data Science.

  7. Since July 2025

    Assistant professor at Cornell

    In July 2025, she joins Cornell’s School of Operations Research and Information Engineering as an assistant professor. Her research connects statistical learning with generative AI, including sample generation with diffusion models and inference from machine-generated data. In August 2026, she coauthors a preprint that establishes a minimax lower bound under the score-entropy loss for discrete diffusion.

Career

  1. Since 2025Cornell UniversityAssistant Professor
  2. University of PennsylvaniaPostdoctoral researcher

Education

  1. 2023Stanford UniversityPhD in Statistics
  2. 2018Tsinghua UniversityMathematics degree

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

Checked career sources: reglab.stanford.edu.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Yuchen Wu yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Exploring the mathematics of generative models duffield.cornell.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  2. Yuchen Wu | Cornell Duffield Engineering duffield.cornell.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  3. Yuchen Wu – RegLab reglab.stanford.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  4. Fundamental Limits of Low-Rank Matrix Estimation with Diverging Aspect Ratios arxiv.org. Checked 27 October 2026.
  5. Theoretical Insights for Diffusion Guidance: A Case Study for Gaussian Mixture Models arxiv.org. Checked 27 October 2026.
  6. Provably Efficient Posterior Sampling for Sparse Linear Regression via Measure Decomposition arxiv.org. Checked 27 October 2026.
  7. Yuchen Wu wuyc0114.github.io. Checked 27 October 2026.
  8. Seminars and Tutorials | News | Center for Optimization and Statistical Learning | Northwestern Engineering mccormick.northwestern.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.
  9. Minimax Optimality of Score-Entropy Discrete Diffusion arxiv.org. Checked 27 October 2026.
  10. Faculty and Staff | School of Operations Research and Information Engineering | Cornell Duffield Engineering duffield.cornell.edu. Checked 27 October 2026.