Jian Qian

Assistant Professor (Incoming)
Department of AI and Data Science
The University of Hong Kong
Email: jianqian@hku.hk
Google Scholar

About Me

Welcome to my homepage! I am an assistant professor in the Department of AI and Data Science at The University of Hong Kong. Previously, I was a Courant Instructor and CDS Fellow at New York University. I received my Ph.D. from the Department of EECS at MIT, where I had the great pleasure of being advised by Sasha Rakhlin. Before MIT, I earned a diplôme in Mathematics and Computer Science from École Normale Supérieure, Paris, and a B.S. in Mathematics from the University of Science and Technology of China.

Research Interests

My research primarily focuses on the intersection between machine learning theory and interactive decision making. I am particularly interested in:

Statistical learning theory
Bandits and reinforcement learning
Online learning

Note: I am looking for motivated PhD students to join my research group. If you are interested, please send me an email with your CV, transcript, and research interests.

Selected Publications & Preprints

Refined Risk Bounds for Unbounded Losses via Transductive Priors
Jian Qian, Alexander Rakhlin, Nikita Zhivotovskiy
Journal of Machine Learning Research (JMLR)
[paper]
The Statistical Complexity of Interactive Decision Making
Dylan J Foster, Sham Kakade, Jian Qian, Alexander Rakhlin
Minor Revision at Mathematics of Operations Research
[paper]

To bootstrap or to rollout? An optimal and adaptive interpolation
Wenlong Mou, Jian Qian
Major Revision at Mathematics of Operations Research
[paper]

Convex and Non-Convex Optimization under Generalized Smoothness
Haochuan Li, Jian Qian, Yi Tian, Alexander Rakhlin, Ali Jadbabaie
[paper]

Advisees

Jiachen Xu (HKUST MPhil-> Columbia PhD)

Teaching

Fall 2025 (at NYU): UA-MATH 334 - Mathematical Statistics

Last updated: December 2024