research overview
- Chen's research aims to build rigorous foundations and developing new methodologies in optimization and systems theory for distributed control and learning of networked dynamical systems. These systems are large-scale with interconnected, active, and possibly self-interested components, operate with incomplete information and in uncertain environments, and must achieve certain desired network-wide objectives or collective behaviors. Problems associated with such systems are typically large, computationally hard, and require distributed solutions; yet they are also very structured and have features that can be exploited by appropriate computational methods. Chen's research focuses on developing optimization approaches for such problems, and brings together optimization, systems theory, and domain-specific knowledges for exploring structures of the underlying problems and systems and leveraging them for the principled design of distributed control and learning architecture.
