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: 028A Hudson Hall
I’m an assistant professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science (secondary appointment) at Duke University. I direct the Duke FuNCtions Lab, where we work on a variety of exciting research topics in next-generation wireless networks and 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 networks and IoT systems. My recent research focuses on both theoretical and experimental aspects of massive antenna systems and millimeter-wave networks, optical-wireless networks, and their convergence with edge cloud, computing, and ML systems. I also enjoy building efficient hardware/software systems and experimental testbeds at scale.
Impacts: My research has been recognized by an IBM Academic Award, a Google Research Scholar Award, the Columbia Engineering Morton B. Friedman Memorial Prize for Excellence, the Columbia University Eli Jury Award, a Facebook Fellowship, and a Wei Family Private Foundation (WFPF) Fellowship. My Ph.D. thesis received the ACM SIGMOBILE Dissertation Award Runner-up. I also received the ACM CoNEXT 2016 Best Paper Award and the ACM MobiHoc 2019 Best Paper Award finalist. WiLO Networks Inc. is currently supported by an NSF SBIR Phased I award (IIP-2108012).
News: I am always looking for motivated and creative B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. students, as well as Postdocs to join my group in Duke ECE. If you are interested in topics related to next-generation wireless networks and systems, optical-wireless communications, AI/ML for networking, edge cloud, and IoT, please email me your CV, transcript, and a brief note about your research interests, and I would be happy to chat!
Research Projects
Current:
– [SRC/DARPA JUMP 2.0] Center for Ubiquitous Connectivity (CUbiC) (center info)
– [NSF SII-NRDZ] SII-NRDZ: Spectrum Sharing via Consumption Models and Telemetry – Prototyping and Field Testing in an Urban FCC Innovation Zone
– [NSF CISE] CNS 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)
I am very fortunate to work with a group of students:
Ph.D. students:
– Chung-Hsuan Tung (Spring 2023-present)
– James Lu (Fall 2022-present, co-advised with Yiran Chen)
– Jialin Liu (Fall 2022-present, co-advised with Yiran Chen), ECE Diversity Fellowship
– Zhihui Gao (Spring 2022-present, co-advised with Yiran Chen)
– Zhenzhou Qi (Fall 2021-present), ACM SIGMOBILE Student Community Grant Award
– Zehao Wang (Fall 2021-present), ACM SIGMOBILE Student Community Grant Award
M.S. and B.S. students:
– Achilles Dabrowski (ECE), Spring 2022-present
– Xuliang Deng (CS), Spring 2022-present
– Kaya Celebi (CS), Fall 2020-present
Recent News
[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.
[02/2022]: Our paper on the design and architecture of COSMOS’ programmable optical x-haul network was accepted to IEEE Network Magazine, Special Issue on Next-Generation Optical Access Networks to Support Super-Broadband Services and 5G/6G Mobile Networks.
[08/2021]: Zhenzhou (Tom) Qi received an ACM SIGMOBILE Student Community Grant award.
[08/2021]: Received an award from the NSF SWIFT program to work on spectrum coexistence with rapid interferer detection and mitigation. This is a collaborative project between Duke (lead institute), Oregon State University (PI: Arun Natarajan), and Yale (PI: Leandros Tassiulas). [NSF award information]
[07/2021]: Our National AI Institute for Edge Computing Leveraging Next-generation Networks (Athena) is officially announced. Athena is a multi-disciplinary team of scientists, engineers, statisticians, legal scholars, and psychologists from Duke (lead institution), MIT, NC A&T, Princeton, Wisconsin, UMich, and Yale. [NSF news] [Duke Today news] [Athena website]
[07/2021]: Our paper, titled “Programmable and open-access millimeter-wave radios in the PAWR COSMOS testbed”, was accepted to ACM WiNTECH 2021. This paper describes the design and implementation of various 28/60 GHz software-defined radios deployed in the PAWR COSMOS testbed along with their measurements and supported experiments.
[06/2021]: Our IMS’21 paper on the integration of the IBM 28 GHz phased array antenna modules in the PAWR COSMOS testbed was selected as a finalist for the Advanced Practical Paper Competition (APPC).
[06/2021]: Received the IBM Academic Award.
[06/2021]: My Ph.D. thesis received the ACM SIGMOBILE Dissertation Award Runner-up.
[05/2021]: Received the Columbia Engineering Morton B. Friedman Memorial Prize for Excellence.
[05/2021]: Received the Columbia University Eli Jury Award.
[03/2021]: Received the Google Research Scholar Award.
Acknowledgments: We are grateful for the generous support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Google, IBM, NEC Labs America, and ACM SIGMOBILE. The findings, positions, or opinions of our research projects do not necessarily represent the official policy of any of these organizations.
