Zixuan Xu

PhD Student
Mathematics, MIT
Email: zixuanxu at mit dot edu

About Me

I am a third-year PhD student at MIT. I am very fortunate to be advised by Virginia Vassilevska Williams and Lisa Sauermann. Previously, I graduated from MIT with a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics and Computer Science.

My main research interest is in extremal combinatorics and combinatorial algorithms.


Publications

Essential covers of the hypercube require many hyperplanes

with Lisa Sauermann

In submisssion

[arXiv]

Simpler and Higher Lower Bounds for Shortcut Sets

with Virginia Vassilevska Williams and Yinzhan Xu

In 2024 ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA 2024)

[arXiv]

New Bounds for Matrix Multiplication: from Alpha to Omega

with Virginia Vassilevska Williams, Yinzhan Xu and Renfei Zhou

In 2024 ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA 2024)

[arXiv]

Improved Roundtrip Spanners, Emulators, and Directed Girth Approximation

with Alina Harbuzova, Ce Jin and Virginia Vassilevska Williams

In 2024 ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA 2024)

[arXiv]

Faster Detours in Undirected Graphs

with Shyan Akmal, Virginia Vassilevska Williams and Ryan Williams

In the European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2023)

[arXiv]

Better Lower Bounds for Shortcut Sets and Additive Spanners via an Improved Alternation Product

with Kevin Lu, Virginia Vassilevska Williams and Nicole Wein

In 2022 ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA 2022)

[arXiv]


Teaching

  • Summer Program in Undergraduate Research (SPUR) mentor, 2023
  • Directed Reading Program (DRP) mentor, 2022