Francis Yan

For More Information

• Francis Yan's website

Education

• Ph.D. in Computer Science, Stanford University, 2020
• B.S. in Computer Science, Tsinghua University, 2015
• B.A. in Economics, Tsinghua University, 2015

Biography

Francis Y. Yan is an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), with an affiliate appointment in Electrical & Computer Engineering. His research focuses on building and optimizing networked systems with practical machine learning (ML), ranging from building real systems and open research platforms that lay the groundwork for applying ML, to devising ML-based algorithms that are readily deployable in practice. Prior to joining UIUC, Francis was a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research Redmond. He earned his Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University and completed his undergraduate studies at Tsinghua University (Yao Class) and MIT.

Academic Positions

• Assistant Professor of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2025–Present
• Affiliate Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2025–Present
• Senior Researcher, Microsoft Research Redmond, 2020–2024

Research Interests

• Networked Systems
• Machine Learning for Systems and Networking
• Multimedia Systems

Other Outside Service

• Program Committee Member, USENIX NSDI 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026
• Program Committee Member, ACM SIGCOMM 2024
• Artifact Evaluation Chair, ACM SIGCOMM 2024
• Program Committee Chair, ACM/IRTF Applied Networking Research Workshop 2023
• Award Committee Member, IRTF Applied Networking Research Prize (2022 - 2025)

Research Honors

• USENIX NSDI Outstanding Paper Award (2024)
• APNet Best Paper Award (2022)
• Applied Networking Research Prize (2021)
• USENIX NSDI Community Award (2020)
• USENIX ATC Best Paper Award (2018)