Tianyi Chen

About

Tianyi Chen has been with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) as an assistant professor since August 2019.

Dr. Chen is the inaugural recipient of the IEEE Signal Processing Society Best PhD Dissertation Award in 2020, a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award in 2021, and a recipient of the Amazon Research Award in 2022. He is also a co-author of the Best Student Paper Award at the NeurIPS Federated Learning Workshop in 2020, the IEEE Signal Processing Society Flagship Conference ICASSP in 2021, and the IEEE Signal Processing Society Young Author Best Paper Award in 2024.

Dr. Chen's current research addresses the theoretical and algorithmic aspects of bilevel optimization and multi-objective optimization and their applications to AI and learning problems: meta-learning (now ICL), LLMs fine-tuning and alignment, and AI-integrated NextG wireless systems.

Education & Training

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, USA: Ph.D, Electrical and Computer Engineering, 2019

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, USA: M.S., Electrical and Computer Engineering, 2016

Fudan University, China: B.S., Communication Science and Engineering, 2014

Research

Primary Research Focus
machine learning, optimization, statistical signal processing, wireless networks

Recognition

Awards & Honors

IEEE Signal Processing Society Young Author Best Paper Award, 2024

Amazon Research Award - AWS AI, 2022

Cisco Faculty Research Award, 2022

Best Student Paper Award (as senior author), ICASSP, 2021

National Science Foundation CAREER Award, 2021

IEEE Signal Processing Society Best PhD Dissertation Award, 2020

Best Student Paper Award (as senior author), NeurIPS workshop on Federated Learning (NeurIPS-SpicyFL), 2020

Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, UMN, 2017

Best Student Paper Award Finalist, Asilomar, 2017

Graduate School Fellowship, UMN, 2014

National Scholarship (Top 2%), China, 2013

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