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Yawen Chen - Welcome! Kia Ora!

Senior Lecturer

Owheo Building, Room 246 Phone: +64 3 479 5740

Email: yawen.chen@otago.ac.nz or yawen@cs.otago.ac.nz

I obtained my PhD degree in Computer Science from the University of Adelaide in Australia in 2008. Before my PhD study, I received my Bachelors/Masters degree in Computer Science in 2002/2004 from Shandong Normal (Teachers) University in China. In Feb. 2012 I was appointed as Lecturer in Department of Computer Science at Otago University, and promoted to Senior Lecturer from Feb. 2018.

I am currently leading the Optical Neural Networks Research Group, which is a sub-group in Systems Research Group. My research interests include optimisation, computer networks/systems, parallel/distributed computing, artificial intelligence acceleration, photonic computing/communication, wired/wireless networking, graph theory etc. I have published extensively in leading journals and prestigious international conferences, such as IEEE Transactions on Computers, IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communication, ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems, INFOCOM, IPDPS, ICPP, etc. I received a Marsden Research Grant assessed by the Mathematical and Information Sciences panel from the Royal Society of New Zealand as the principal investigator in 2016, which is the most prestigious and competitive research fund in New Zealand (successful rate 10%). This project funding success was mentioned in the NZ News (No. 9).

I am currently serving as External Engagement panel member, Coordinator for Otago-SWU international co-education program (award of International Programme Innovation Grant), and Vice Chair/Coordinator/Membership Chair for Dunedin ACM Women in Computing Chapter, and Otago Women in Computing Association at School of Computing.

Current Student Supervision

Name	Level of Study	Research Title / Representative publications	Supervision Type
Waqas Ahmad	PhD (2018-2023)	Efficient transmission schemes for large-scale MIMO systems IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, ICC	Co-Supervisor
Fei Dai	PhD (2019-2023)	Accelerating the artificial neural networks on optical systems PPoPP 2023, ICC 2023, ICPP 2023	Principal Supervisor
Hao Zhang	PhD (2020-)	On-chip photonics on multicore systems Parallel Computing, ICPP 2023	Principal Supervisor
Chenpeng Xia	PhD (2021-)	Photonic computing and communication for neural network accelerators ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems	Principal Supervisor
Fei Gao	PhD (2022-)	Efficient neural network accelerators with optical computing The Journal of Supercomputing, Optical Switching and Networking	Principal Supervisor

Completed Student Supervision

Name	Level of Study	Representative publications	Supervision Type
Abbas Arghavani	PhD	IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems	Co-Supervisor
Wen Yang	PhD	IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems	Principal Supervisor
Feiyang Liu	PhD	IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Computing, INFOCOM	Co-Supervisor

NEWS

[2023] Congratulations to Phd student Chengpeng on his paper accepted by ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems (TECS).
[2023] Congratulations to Phd students Travis and Hao on their papers accepted by The 52nd International Conference on Parallel Processing (ICPP), a prestigious A-rank conference, i.e. we got two papers accepted by ICPP at the same time!
[2023] Congratulations to former Phd student Wen Yang who got one piece of her PhD work accepted by IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems .
[2023] Invited as co-editor for a special issue of "Understanding Genetic Complexity Through Deep Neural Network Applications in Systems Biology Research” by Frontiers in Systems Biology.
[2023] Congratulations to Phd student Fei Dai (Travis) who submitted his Phd thesis, and got a faculty position Lecturer at EIT (one of New Zealand's top-rated institutes of technology).
[2023] Congratulations to Phd graduate Luming who got a researcher position in Tsinghua University, Top 1 university in China.
[2023] Congratulations to Phd student Travis who got his work accepted by ICC23 and PPoPP23.
[2023] Congratulations to Phd student Waqas who submitted his Phd thesis and got a permanent job in Dunedin City Council.
[2022] Congratulations to Phd student Waqas who got his paper accepted by IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing.
[2021] Invited as Lead Guest Editor of the journal [Electronics] Special Issue: Advanced Applications of Sensor Network and Wireless Communication.
[2021.11] Invited as Lead Guest Editor of the journal [Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing] Special Issue: Intelligent defense in the ubiquitous network environment: 1models, technologies, and applications.
[2021] Congratulations to former Phd student Abbas who got another piece of his PhD work paper accepted by IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing.
[2021] Congratulations to former visiting student Furong Fang, who got his piece of work accepted by IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing.
[2019.02] Congratulations to Phd student Abbas who got one piece of his PhD work accepted by ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems.
[2019] Congratulations to Phd student Aleksei who got a job offer as Research Fellow in a leading research group in the area of MIMO at Lund University in Sweden.
[2017] Promotion to Senior Lecturer is granted. Effective from Feb.2018.
[2017] co-authored papers accepted by ACM Transactions on Internet Technology, IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Computing, LCN 2017, Globcom 2017.
[2016] Got Marsden Fund as PI.
[2016] Serve as Web Chair of ITNAC 2016 and Workshop co-Chair of PICom 2016.
[2015.06.05] Group news: 1) Welcome Abbas Arghavani taking on board as a PhD student in System Research group! 2) Congratulations to Adeel on submitting his Phd thesis.

[2015.01.30] Attended ACSW 2015 conference and presented paper in Sydney.
[2014.11.27] Congratulations to Feiyang, who got his first Phd research paper accepted by INFOCOM 2015 (A+ ranking, acceptance rate 19%, received 2 reviewers' strong acceptances).