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REU

REU Participant Details

Li, Yexuan

  • Yexuan Li participant image
  • Yexuan Li
  • University: Tsinghua University (China)
  • Mentor: Lirong Xia
  • Mentor Department: DIMACS
  • Project Site: https://archive.reu.dimacs.rutgers.edu/2025/yl2743/public_html
  • Project Site - Original: http://reu.dimacs.rutgers.edu/~yl2743
  • Personal Site: http://reu.dimacs.rutgers.edu/~yl2743/
  • Participant Year: 2025
  • About Me:

    Hiiiiiii! Welcome to my page! :D

    I’m a sophomore student from School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University. My major is Xuetang Class of Economics, which is aimed at training the best economists. Fortunately, I get instructed by the most famous economist, Pro. Yinyi Qian, and I do want to do some excellent works in economy. Besides that, I also have great interests in Maths, Physics, Politics and Chinese Literature. Now I am also studying a minor degree of Physics in Tsinghua. Learning physics is really attractive to me! I like reading and writing too, and you can view my works on this website.

    You can find my CV here: My Curriculum Vitae.

    Also, welcome to My Bilibili Homepage! Here you can see my blogs and class videos, and I have also uploaded some course reviewing notes. Of course, more complete course materials can be found on the website.

    My office now is in Room 450, CoRE Building, Busch Campus, Rutgers University.

    You can contact me through: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. / Wechat / Phone Number.
  • Weekly Log:
    Week 1 (30/06 - 06/07)Log Description:
    • Monday: We flied to JFK from PKX and arrived at Rutgers in the afternoon, June 29. Nadya and Ava showed us around here and brought us to buy some food. We also got some free pots, plaits and bowls from his office. That’s really convenient! On Monday, Larry showed us our offices and told us plans in the near future. I also sent emails to some professors, asking them whether they want to be my advisors. Unluckily, mang of them were busy in summer holiday. This searching pattern would still continue for some days. :(
    • Tuesday: Today we attended a seminar about Formalizing mathematics with Lean and Mathlib. The professor introduced how to check a proof through these programms. Most of this seminar was understandable. To my surprise, The seminar also provided us with pizza! Delicious! :P
    • Wednesday: On Wednesday and Thursday I mainly studied how to create my personl website. It was difficult for me as I was not very familiar with programm. But with chatgpt’s help, I successfully established my first website! Cool! This morning I met with Pro. Xia in his office. We talked about CS and what we wanted to do this summer. After that he sent me some papers, so I also spent some time reading them these days.
    • Thursday: Today I finished contacting with professors and decided to work with Pro. Lirong Xia and Jie Gao. I met with Pro. Kangning Wang this afternoon and discussed about his work. I found it really interesting to me. Unfortunately, Pro. Wang would be busy this month, so he couldn’t advise me. But talking with him also gave me some deep insight into CS interacting with Economics. I read something about voting theory. Pro. Wang was very kind, and he was our alum! He brought us to a Vietnam restaurant for Vietnamese noodles, which tasted very good!
    • Friday: Today was the Independence Day! So we travelled to New York. I imagined to meet some parades, but actually it was harmonious in the streets. I found many small stands selling cheap hats and souveniers. And we also went to many famous attractions, like the bull in Wall Street. It’s really a prosprous city! In the evening when we came back from New York, students in DIMACS organized a campfire party. We chatted, ate barbecue, and played football and baseball. In such a peaceful and exciting moonnight, I almost forgot all worries!
    • Saturday: Free Time!
    • Sunday: I concluded papers I read till now and prepared a simple model for tomorrow’s meeting.
    Week 2 (07/07 - 13/07)Log Description:
    • Monday: Today I chatted with Pro. Xia online and went to Pro. Gao’s office. I introduced my primary opinions and model to them and discussed what to explore next. They gave me some directions, for example, structure balance, complexity analysis, and competition strategy. After that I searched some papers about these topics and studied from them. In the afternoon, Lazaros gave a lecture about scientific writing to us. I learnt a lot from that.
    • Tuesday: I read others’ websites and I thought I need to write briefly. Here was not my diary hhh. This week I mainly read some related papers, thought about literature review, and continued to write my model. I finished a small paper with 15 pages, including new ideas about dunamic analysis and competition strategy.
    • Wednesday: Working!
    • Thursday: Today we visited the Nokia Bell Labs, learning the history about it and watched them operating robots. Also, we attended a panel with some of their employees, who do research and developing working here and also guide some Ph.d students. They thought their works there both happy and interesting. It’s just a little bit different from that in universities, but I can still enjoying studying, maybe lacking some communication opportunities.
    • Friday: All of us took photos at noon. We had many poses and I really cherish it because it contains my happiest memory here. In the afternoon, we attended a panel with some professors from Maths, CS and Statistic. We discussed about Ph.D lifes and what preparations we need to do.
    • Saturday: Today we travelled to New York again! We took a boat to Liberty Island and saw Statue of Liberty. Memoriable Day!
    • Sunday: Still working.
    Week 3 (14/07 - 20/07)Log Description:
    • Monday: Finishing my model and preparing for meeting tomorrow. Also we attended a seminar about Bridging ML and Formal Methods for Trustworthy Network Management, but it was very difficult for me. I think I only got 5% ideas from her speech. Frankly speaking, I do not major in that direction, but it’s meaningful to learn some basic ideas about that.
    • Tuesday: Today I had a meeting with Pro. Xia in the morning. The biggst problem we faced was our model may not make sense with election. There were lots of difficulties for us to overcome before reaching a powerful model in party’s view. So we needed to do extensions and tell a new story. Moreover, I finished my PPT for Thursday.
    • Wednesday: I searched papers in Social Networks and Friedkin-Johnson Model, I planned to apply my model to opinion evolution and friend group formation. I listened to other students’ pre ifirst group. They have worked for two months, so their pre were a little bit abstract to me.
    • Thursday: Today I gave a pre about my work in five minutes. I briefly introduced our motivation and models and I gave some examples, which I think is very clear. You can find my PPT here. In the afternoon, I read some materials about Economic Geography, including Why cities lose, which studies how votees distribute would affect the election results. Moreover, we hosted a campfire again! We played UNO and ate barbecue. I was a little bit tired so I came back home earlier.
    • Friday: I continued reading new papers and thinking about my model.
    • Saturday: Today we travelled to NY again and visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was really big and I walked about seven hours without rest and even lunch. I almost walked through every exhibition hall and the works of art shocked me! I saw many paintings I learnt in our Art classes when I was in senior high school.
    • Sunday: I had a rest today and read some books.
    Week 4 (21/07 - 27/07)Log Description:
    • Monday: Today I joined in the Math Day in Jane Street, NY. We played many Maths games, for example, estimation contest and trading game. Thet were really fun and I almost couldn’t calculate clearly! Later we visited their office. There were so many computers!
    • Tuesday: Today I met my advisors online and discussed about my new model. I decided to work on a simpler model first. Also I dropped by Pro. Xintong Wang’s office and learnt about her fields, like mechanism design and financial market prediction. These topics were interesting to me, too.