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Tingjun Chen, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Department of Computer Science (secondary appointment)
Duke University

Email: tingjun.chen [at] duke [dot] edu
Phone: (919) 613-1581 (O)
Office: 411 Wilkinson | Lab: 429 Wilkinson

Twitter: @TingjunChen
GitHub: tingjunchen

[CV] (v. Nov. 2023)
[Google Scholar]
[ResearchGate]
[LinkedIn]

I’m an assistant professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science (secondary appointment) at Duke University. I direct the Duke FuNCtions Lab, working with a group of talented students on a variety of exciting research topics in next-generation wireless, optical, mobile, and quantum networks as well as edge computing systems. I am also the co-founder and Network Lead of WiLO Networks Inc., a start-up focusing on low-power sensor hardware and end-to-end systems. 

Before joining Duke, I was a postdoc in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Yale University in 2020-2021, working with Professor Leandros Tassiulas and Professor Lin Zhong. Before that, I received my Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University in 2020 (advisor: Professor Gil Zussman) and my B.Eng. degree in Electronic Engineering from Tsinghua University in 2014 (advisors: Professor Zhisheng Niu and Professor Sheng Zhou).

Interests: I am interested in the broad areas of future wireless, mobile, optical, and quantum networks as well as intelligent IoT systems. My recent research focuses on both theoretical and experimental aspects of massive antenna systems and millimeter-wave networks, optical and quantum networks, and spectrum sharing systems, and their convergence with edge cloud, energy-efficient computing, and AI/ML. I also enjoy building efficient hardware-software systems and experimental testbeds at scale.

Impacts: My research has been recognized by two IBM Academic Awards (2023, 2021), a Google Research Scholar Award (2021), the Columbia Engineering Morton B. Friedman Memorial Prize for Excellence (2021), the Columbia University Eli Jury Award (2021), a Facebook Fellowship (2019), and a Wei Family Private Foundation (WFPF) Fellowship (2014). I have received multiple paper awards from IEEE/Optica OFC’24 (Top-Scored Paper), IEEE/Optica OFC’23 (Top-Scored Paper), ECOC’23 (Best Paper Award), ACM CoNEXT’16 (Best Paper Award), ACM MobiHoc’19 (Best Paper Finalist), and IEEE MTT-S IMS’19 (Advanced Practice Paper Finalist). My Ph.D. thesis received the ACM SIGMOBILE Dissertation Award Runner-up. WiLO Networks Inc. is currently supported by an NSF SBIR Phase I (TI-2108012) and Phase II (TI-2345381) awards.

News: I am always looking for motivated and creative B.S., M.S., Ph.D. students, and Postdocs to join my group in Duke ECE. If you are interested in topics related to next-generation wireless networks and systems, optical and quantum networks, AI/ML for networking, energy-efficient computing and edge cloud, and intelligent IoT systems, please email me your CV, transcript, and a brief note about your research interests, and I would be happy to chat!

Research Projects

Current:
– [NSF NewSpectrum] Enabling Dense and In-Situ Spectrum Monitoring via Analog Correlators and Circuits-System Co-Design
– [Duke Engineering Beyond the Horizon initiative] Lighting A Dark Fiber Network for Hybrid Quantum-Classical Experimental Research
– [NSF EAGER] An Integrated Fiber Sensing and Communication Living Lab in the Research Triangle
– [SRC/DARPA JUMP 2.0] Center for Ubiquitous Connectivity (CUbiC) [CUbiC website] [center info]
– [NSF SII-NRDZ] Spectrum Sharing via Consumption Models and Telemetry – Prototyping and Field Testing in an Urban FCC Innovation Zone
– [NSF CISE Core] Medium: Softwarizing Millimeter-wave Radio Access Networks at the Edge 
– [NSF SWIFT] SHIELD: A Software-Hardware Approach for Spectrum Coexistence with Rapid Interferer Learning, Detection, and Mitigation
– [NSF NAI] National AI Institute for Edge Computing Leveraging Next-generation Networks [Athena website]
– [NSF PAWR] Cloud Enhanced Open Software-defined Mobile Wireless Testbed for City-scale Deployment [COSMOS website]

Past:
– [FlexICoN] Full-duplex Wireless: From Integrated Circuits to Networks (Columbia)
– [EnHANTs] Energy-Harvesting Active Networked Tags (Columbia)

Recent talks:
– “Toward Intelligent and Efficient Optical Networks: Performance Modeling, Co-Existence, and Field Trials” [link]
– More talks and videos see below…

I am very fortunate to work with a group of students:

Ph.D. students:
 – Yiming Li (Fall 2024-present)
 – Zhecun Liu (Fall 2024-present)
 – Wei (Michael) Cheng (Fall 2023-present, co-advised with Yiran Chen)
 – Chung-Hsuan Tung (Spring 2023-present)
 – Zhihui Gao (Spring 2022-present, co-advised with Yiran Chen)
 – Zhenzhou Qi (Fall 2021-present)
 – Zehao Wang (Fall 2021-present)

M.S. and B.S. students:
 – Zeyu (Michael) Li (Duke ECE)
 – Junyao (Bill) Zheng (Duke ECE)
 – Yunjia Zhang (CMU ECE)
 – Yi-Chyun Wong (Duke ECE)

Recent News

[09/2024]: Our paper on real-time, efficient baseband processing for mmWave networks was accepted to ACM MobiCom’24. [code]

[08/2024]: Received an award from the NSF NewSpectrum program to work dense and in-situ spectrum monitoring leveraging efficient circuit-system co-design. This is a collaborative project between Duke (lead institute), University of Notre Dame, Northeastern University, and Oregon State University.

[08/2024]: Gave an invited talk at the OPTICA webinar about our work on optical network performance modeling and optimization. [link to talk video]

[06/2024]: Received a grant from Duke Engineering’s Beyond the Horizon Initiative to develop a dark fiber network for hybrid quantum-classical experimental research. This is a collaborative project with the Duke Quantum Center (DQC) and Duke Office of Information Technology (OIT)

[04/2024]: Zeyu (Michael) Li received the 3rd Place Winner in the Spring 2024 ECE Independent Study Poster Session.

[03/2024]Our OFC’24 paper on multi-span optical power spectrum prediction using cascaded learning was selected by the subcommittee as a Top-Scored Paper. Zehao was also selected as a finalist for the Corning Outstanding Student Paper Competition.

[03/2024]: One postdeadline paper accepted to OFC’24 on the first field demonstration of 4D optical link tomography using transponder capable of distance, time, frequency, and polarization-resolved monitoring.

[02/2024]: Our paper on optimized analog multi-user beamforming in mmWave networks was accepted to ACM MobiCom’24. [code]

[02/2024]: Our paper on RF signal mapping using public geographic databases (OpenStreetMap), open-source ray tracing tools (Sionna), and ML was accepted to IEEE DySPAN’24. [code and dataset]

[01/2024]: Our paper on real-time generation of high-fidelity point clouds using low-cost mmWave radars was accepted to IEEE ICRA’24.

[12/2023]: Three papers were accepted to OFC’24: (i) Multi-span optical power spectrum prediction using cascaded learning, (ii) Transceiver BER-OSNR modeling for QoT estimation, and (iii) Fiber type identification using in-service Brillouin optical time domain analysis.

[11/2023]: Zeyu (Michael) Li was selected as a Pratt Research Fellow (Class of 2025).

[10/2023]: Our paper on a blackbox Physical layer attack framework on mmWave automotive FMCW radars was accepted to ISOC NDSS’24. [arXiv]

[10/2023]: Our paper on automated and on-demand optical wavelength path provisioning for data center exchange services was selected as a Highest Scoring and Best Paper at ECOC’23. The results were also presented by NTT at the Telecom Infra Project’s (TIP) Fyuz event in Spain. [NTT press release]

[09/2023]: Our paper on the field-trial of coexistence of real-time fiber sensing and coherent 400 GbE signals was accepted to IEEE/Optica Journal of Lightwave Technology, Special Issue on Top-Scored Papers from IEEE/Optica OFC’23.

[07/2023]: Received an award from the NSF EAGER program to work with Duke Office of Information Technology (OIT) on building an integrated fiber sensing and communication testbed leveraging Duke-Durham field fiber. [NSF award information]

[07/2023]: Received an NSF supplement to conduct experimental millimeter-wave research on the NSF-funded PAWR COSMOS testbed.

[07/2023]: Two papers were accepted to ACM MobiHoc’23: (i) Wi-Fi monitoring using low sampling rate radios, (ii) Optimization of sectorized wireless networks.

[07/2023]: Received an award from the Thomas Lord Educational Innovation Grant Program that will support the development of an undergraduate course on full-stack IoT systems.

[07/2023]: Our paper on an open EDFA gain spectrum dataset collected using the PAWR COSMOS testbed and its applications in data-driven EDFA gain modeling was accepted to IEEE/Optica Journal of Optical Communications and Networking. [Dataset]

[07/2023]: Our paper on the design and deployment of programmable millimeter-wave radios in the COSMOS testbed was accepted to Computer Networks.

[07/2023]: Three papers were accepted to ECOC’23: (i) Field trial of automatic WDM optical path provisioning, (ii) One-shot transfer learning for EDFA gain spectrum prediction, (iii) ML-based Raman tilt prediction in ROADM transmission systems.

[03/2023]: Received a research grant from NTT to work on autonomous WDM optical link control frameworks.

[02/2023]: Our OFC’23 paper on the field-trial of coexistence of real-time fiber sensing and coherent 400GbE signals was selected by the subcommittee as a Top-Scored Paper.

[01/2023]: Excited to be part of a $35M SRC JUMP 2.0 Center for Ubiquitous Connectivity (CUbiC) with the goal of enabling seamless, robust, and scalable edge-to-cloud connectivity by developing and integrating advanced photonic, wired, and wireless connectivity solutions. CUbiC consists of a team of world-class researchers from Columbia (lead institution, director: Keren Bergman), UC Berkeley (assistant director: Ali Niknejad), UCSB, UIUC, MIT,  UMich, Cornell, Duke, Princeton, Stanford, Oregon State University, UCSD, and USC. [SRC JUMP 2.0 program] [DARPA news] [Columbia Engineering news] [Duke ECE news]

[12/2022]: Received an award from the NSF SII-NRDZ program to work on spectrum sharing field trials in an urban FCC innovation zone. This is a collaborative project between Columbia (lead institute), Syracuse, Princeton, Duke, Rutgers, and CCNY. [NSF award information]

[12/2022]: Two papers were accepted to OFC’23: (i) Field-trial of coexistence and simultaneous switching of real-time fiber sensing and coherent 400GbE, (ii) EDFA wavelength-dependent gain prediction using transfer learning.

[08/2022]: Received an award from the NSF CISE Core Medium program to work on the softwarization of millimeter-wave RANs. This is a collaborative project between Duke (lead institute) and Yale (PI: Lin Zhong). [NSF award information]

[06/2022]: Our paper on ML-based optical power spectrum prediction in multi-span ROADM systems was accepted to ECOC’22 (oral presentation).

[04/2022]: Received a research gift from NEC Labs America.

Acknowledgments: Our research projects are supported in part by NSF grants ECCS-2434131 (NewSpectrum), CNS-2330333 (EAGER), AST-2232458 (SII-NRDZ), CNS-2211944 (CISE Core), CNS-2128638 (SWIFT), and CNS-2112562 (NAI), the SRC-DARPA JUMP 2.0 program (CUbiC – Center for Ubiquitous Connectivity), a Pratt Engineering Beyond the Horizon Initiative grant, a Google Research Scholar Award, an IBM Academic Award, an NEC Labs America Research Gift, an NTT Research Grant, and an ACM SIGMOBILE Student Community Grant. The findings, positions, or opinions of our research projects do not necessarily represent the official policy of any of these organizations.