Jiayang Li

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I am a Tenured-Track Assistant Professor in the Department of Data and Systems Engineering at the University of Hong Kong. I obtained my Ph.D. degree in transportation systems analysis from Northwestern University in 2024 and my B.S. degree in mathematics from Tsinghua University in 2019.

My research aims to bring together optimization, game theory, and machine learning to address operations research challenges, particular within transportation and mobility systems. Looking ahead, I am looking forward to expanding my research to other complex systems, including infrastructure, energy, environmental systems and beyond. The ultimate goal of my research is to enhance the quality of life across diverse human habitats.

Openings

I am looking for self-motivated Ph.D. students and postdoctoral researchers with a strong mathematical and/or programming background for 2026 Spring and 2026 Fall. I am also happy to host remote undergraduate research interns. If you have interests, please reach me directly by email at jiayangl@hku.hk.

 

Selected publications

Legend: * corresponding author; † equal contribution; underlined represents group members.
  1. Under Review
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    Enforcing priority in schedule-based user equilibrium transit assignment
    Liyang Feng , Hanlin Sun , Yu Marco Nie , Jun Xie* , and Jiayang Li*
    2026
    Under Review
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  2. TS Under Revision
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    LLM-guided reinforcement learning with representative agents for traffic modeling
    Hanlin Sun , and Jiayang Li*
    2025
    Under Revision at Transportation Science
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  3. OR
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    An efficient algorithm for continuous bi-criteria traffic assignment
    Jun Xie , Qianni Wang , Jiayang Li , and Yu Marco Nie*
    Accepted to Operations Research (subject to a voluntary data and code review), 2026
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  4. ISTTT
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    A scalable descent algorithm for network design problems
    Jing Yu , Qianni Wang , Yu Marco Nie , and Jiayang Li*
    Accepted for ISTTT, 2026
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  5. ISTTT
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    A general algorithm for traffic assignment problems with continuously distributed user attributes
    Qianni Wang , Hui Li , Jun Xie , Yu Marco Nie* , and Jiayang Li*
    Accepted for ISTTT, 2026
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  6. OR Under Revision
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    Differentiable bilevel programming for Stackelberg congestion games
    Jiayang Li , Jing Yu , Qianni Wang , Boyi Liu , Zhaoran Wang , and Yu Marco Nie*
    2024
    Under Revision at Operations Research
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  7. TS
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    A day-to-day dynamical approach to the most likely user equilibrium problem
    Jiayang Li , Qianni Wang , Liyang Feng , Jun Xie , and Yu Marco Nie*
    Transportation Science, 2024
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  8. TS
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    Wardrop equilibrium can be boundedly rational: A new behavioral theory of route choice
    Jiayang Li , Zhaoran Wang , and Yu Marco Nie*
    Transportation Science, 2024
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  9. TR-B
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    Accessibility-based ethics-aware transit design
    Tianxing Dai† , Jiayang Li† , and Yu Marco Nie*
    Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, 2023
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  10. ICML
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    Achieving hierarchy-free approximation for bilevel programs with equilibrium constraints
    Jiayang Li , Jing Yu , Boyi Liu , Yu Marco Nie* , and Zhaoran Wang
    Proceeding of the 40th International Conference on Machine Learning, 2023
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  11. NeurIPS
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    End-to-end learning and intervention in games
    Jiayang Li , Jing Yu , Yu Marco Nie* , and Zhaoran Wang
    Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 33, 2020
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