Meet the Recruited Faculty – Zheng Chen

Research on communications engineering, development of new courses, and a hope of writing some textbooks and monographs – Zheng Chen aims to be a bridge that connects different research areas, and recently we talked to her about her own research and ambitions. 

Zheng Chen, Associate Professor in Communication Systems at Linköping University, has been a part of the ELLIIT Recruited Faculty since October 2021. During this time, she has found an interest in multiple research topics and participated in episode 6 of the ELLIIT Tech Talk series: When Complex Networks Meets Decentralized Machine Learning.

Her primary research area is wireless communication networks. These days she’s particularly interested in topics within the intersection of communications, control, and machine learning. One example is communication-efficient distributed consensus and optimization over wireless networks.

Where did you find your interest in wireless communication networks?

– I’m generally interested in research topics that are related to probability theory, stochastic processes, and optimization. This specific research area ticks all the boxes.

In your own words, how would you summarize your work within this area?

– Distributed consensus and multi-agent optimization are extensively studied topics within the fields of control theory and optimization. However, in many cases, the impact of communications is either ignored or represented in overly abstract terms. The main challenge is that all nodes need to both send and receive information from all the neighbors in every iteration of the algorithm. Imagine a crowded room where everyone is trying to talk with everyone at the same time. If we don’t coordinate the communication process, then nobody will be able to hear each other. My work in this direction is to design communication protocols to achieve fast and reliable information exchange and fusion in wireless multi-agent systems.

You are also developing a new PhD course. What can you say about that?

Yes, I’m developing a new course on communication-efficient methods for distributed information processing and machine learning. Hopefully, I will be able to write or edit a book on this topic.

What are your ambitions with ELLIIT in the future?

Besides the typical ambition of being a good researcher, I would also like to be a bridge that connects different research areas and different people working in those areas.

And finally, what do you enjoy doing in your free time outside of academia?

Reading, exercising, occasionally painting.