Tianyi Chen is an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Cornell Tech and Cornell Engineering. Prior to joining Cornell Tech, he was an associate professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), where his research was jointly supported by the RPI–IBM Artificial Intelligence Research Partnership. Chen received his bachelor’s degree from Fudan University in 2014 and his doctoral degree from the University of Minnesota in 2019.
Chen’s research focuses on the theoretical foundations and algorithmic design of multi-objective optimization and learning, with applications to generative AI, and emerging computing paradigms such as distributed and analog computing. His work bridges theory and real-world impact, leading to several joint patents with IBM.
Chen is the inaugural recipient of the IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Ph.D. Dissertation Award in 2020 and a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award in 2021. His research has also been recognized with multiple industrial awards, including the Amazon Research Award and the Cisco Research Award. He has received several best paper recognitions, including the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP) Best Student Paper Award in 2021 and the IEEE Signal Processing Society Young Author Best Paper Award in 2024.