About

I am an Omidyar Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute. Before that, I was a Schmidt Science Fellow at Cornell working with Steven Strogatz. I received my Ph.D. in Physics from Northwestern, advised by Adilson Motter. You can reach me at yzhang@santafe.edu.

My research focuses on developing mathematical and computational tools for the study of complex systems, especially using techniques from dynamical systems, network theory, data science, and machine learning. I apply these tools to understand the behavior of complex systems that are often nonlinear and high-dimensional, which includes questions in mathematical biology (how do circadian clocks re-synchronize as we recover from jet lag?), neuroscience (how important are nonpairwise interactions in shaping macroscopic brain dynamics?), data-driven modeling (when can digital twins generalize to previously unseen conditions?), and scientific machine learning (is zero-shot forecasting of chaotic systems possible?). Some topics I worked on recently include high-dimensional basins in multistable systems, dynamics and inference on higher-order networks, and out-of-distribution generalization in neural networks.