I am a first-year Ph.D. student in computer science at Stanford University and a member of the CS Theory Group. Welcome to my website!

I am broadly interested in theoretical computer science and quantum information theory. In the past I’ve worked on combinatorial graph algorithms, distributed protocols, and streaming algorithms.

I received my B.A. in computer science and astrophysics at the University of California, Berkeley. During my undergraduate years, I was fortunate to be advised by John Preskill, Jason Li, Jelani Nelson, Lili Su, among many others.

Research

(Author ordering is alphabetical by last name unless denoted with *)

Preprints

*Optimizing Sparse SYK
Matthew Ding, Robbie King, Bobak T. Kiani, and Eric R. Anschuetz
In submission, 2025

Conference Publications

Space Complexity of Minimum Cut Problems in Single-Pass Streams
Matthew Ding, Alexandro Garces, Jason Li, Honghao Lin, Jelani Nelson, Vihan Shah, and David P. Woodruff
Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science (ITCS 2025) [Slides]

Deterministic Minimum Steiner Cut in Maximum Flow Time
Matthew Ding and Jason Li
European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2024) [Slides]

*BeeGees: Stayin’ Alive in Chained BFT
Neil Giridharan, Florian Suri-Payer, Matthew Ding, Heidi Howard, Ittai Abraham, and Natacha Crooks
ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC 2023)

Journal Publications

*Fast and Robust State Estimation and Tracking via Hierarchical Learning
Connor Mclaughlin (joint first-author), Matthew Ding (joint first-author), Deniz Erdogmus, and Lili Su
To appear in IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control (IEEE-TAC), 2026

Teaching

Teaching Assistant
EECS 126: Probability and Random Processes (UC Berkeley, Spring 2025)

Teaching Assistant
CS 70: Discrete Mathematics and Probability Theory (UC Berkeley, Fall 2024)

Notes

Lecture 24 Notes: The Sensitivity Conjecture
CS 294-92: Analysis of Boolean Functions (UC Berkeley, Spring 2025)

Lecture 12 Notes: Linear probing with 5-wise independence, symmetrization, approximate membership
CS 270: Combinatorial Algorithms and Data Structures (UC Berkeley, Spring 2023)

“We shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

—T.S. Eliot, from “Little Gidding”, Four Quartets (1943)