Hello! I’m an assistant professor in the Integrated Systems Engineering department at the Ohio State University; I am also a core faculty member of the Sustainability Institute as well as Co-PI of the EmPOWERment NRT program. I have additional affiliations with the Translational Data Analytics Institute, the Center for Quantum Information Science and Engineering, and the STEAM Factory. I work in mathematical optimization: in simple terms, leveraging computers and mathematics to help make better decisions.
Education
BASc in Industrial (Systems) Engineering in 2010 from the University of Toronto, and PhD in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research in 2015 from the University of California, Berkeley. I was a postdoctoral research scientist in the Industrial Engineering and Operations Research department at Columbia University from 2015 to 2017.
Research
My research focuses on the design and implementation of optimization models and algorithms (MIP/MINLP/global optimization), including hardware acceleration via parallel computing or quantum computing. I’ve worked on a variety of applications: scheduling, facility location, financial portfolio optimization, and various problems arising in power systems operations, policy, and planning. I’m also interested in global methods for machine learning problems, including tensor completion and optimal classification trees; global methods can enable things like compactness, interpretability, verification, explicit constraints, and data efficiency.
Recent-ish Funding/Award News
PhD student Yongzheng Dai and I won the MIP 2024 Workshop Computational Competition (news link)
PhD student Alexander While received an EmPOWERment fellowship (news link)
3-year $312k grant from the Office of Naval Research for Distributed Projections for Mixed-Integer Programming (news link)
1-year $30k grant with Prof. Cathy Xia and Prof. Bhavik Bakshi from the Sustainability Institute for Toward Net-Zero, Nature-Positive Electric Power Systems with Stochastic Models of Techno-Ecological Networks
1-year $46k grant with Prof. Theodore Allen from Goodwill for Optimal Scheduling Software System for Staffing Houses (news link)
1-year $10k seed grant for CQISE for Quantum Computing for Discrete Optimization (news link)
Current Graduate Students
Yongzheng Dai, PhD Candidate
Yunjing Guo, PhD Candidate
(joint advising with Ramteen Sioshansi)
Pavan Etha, PhD student
Alexander While, PhD student
Dengfeng Gao, PhD student
Past Advisees
Hyeongjun Kim, PhD 2024: Energy Storage Operational Modeling to Maximize Arbitrage Value and Improve Reliability
(joint advising with Ramteen Sioshansi)
Milad Dehghani Filabadi, PhD 2024: Exponential Conic Programming Techniques for Gas and Power Systems
Position: Operations Research and Data Scientist @ Bayer Crop Science
Abhishek Tiwari, Master’s student 2024
Xinliang (Frederick) Zhang BS 2021
Position: PhD @ University of Michigan, CSE
Wenqi Kou BS 2020
Position: M.Eng. @ University of California, Berkeley, IEOR
Contact
Address
Chen Chen, Assistant Professor
Department of Integrated Systems Engineering
The Ohio State University
244 Baker Systems Engineering Building
1971 Neil Ave
Columbus, OH 43210
Phone
614-247-8475
chen.8018@osu.edu