Xiao Mao (毛啸)

I am a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at Stanford University advised by Professor Aviad Rubinstein. Previously, I received an M.Eng degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a B.S. degree in Computer Science and Mathematics at MIT. My M.Eng thesis was supervised by Prof. Virginia Vassilevska Williams.

My research interest is in theoretical computer science in general. (CV)

Email: xiaomao at stanford dot edu.

Publications

Conference Papers

Breaking the Cubic Barrier for (Unweighted) Tree Edit Distance

Xiao Mao

IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS 2021). Machtey Award for Best Student Paper. Invited to the SICOMP Special Issue for FOCS 2021

[SIAM Journal Version] [IEEE] [arXiv]

Fully-Dynamic All-Pairs Shortest Paths: Likely Optimal Worst-Case Update Time

Xiao Mao

ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC 2024)

[arXiv]

(1−ε)-Approximation of Knapsack in Nearly Quadratic Time

Xiao Mao

ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC 2024)

[arXiv]

Approximating Knapsack and Partition via Dense Subset Sums

Mingyang Deng, Ce Jin, Xiao Mao

ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA 2023)

[arXiv]

On Problems Related to Unbounded SubsetSum: A Unified Combinatorial Approach

Mingyang Deng, Xiao Mao, Ziqian Zhong

ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA 2023)

[arXiv]

Older Manuscripts

Shortest non-separating st-path on chordal graphs

Xiao Mao

[preprint on arXiv]

A natural extension to the convex hull problem and a novel solution

Xiao Mao

[preprint on arXiv]

Miscellaneous

In Chinese, my name is written as 毛啸 (Máo Xiào). My mother gave me the English name "Matthew" due to its phonetic similarity to "Mao Xiao" (roughly pronounced "Mao Shiao" in Mandarin, and in Ningxiangnese spoken in my mother's hometown it's roughly pronounced "Maw Siaw" rhyming with "paw").

Competitive programming: Codeforces, Topcoder, AtCoder

My commonly used ID matthew99 consists of two parts: Matthew as my English name, and 99 as in my birth year 1999. Whenever the ID has been previously taken, an extra 'a' is attached to the end forming matthew99a.