Tingjun Chen, Ph.D.

: tingjun.chen [at] duke.edu
: 411 & 429 Wilkinson
: (919) 613-1581

I am an assistant professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science (secondary appointment) at Duke University. I direct the , working with a group of talented students on various topics cutting across the networking, communication, sensing, and energy-efficient computing aspects of wireless, mobile, optical, and quantum networked systems, and our projects span both the theoretical and experimental domains. 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 in Fall 2021, I was a postdoc in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Yale University in 2020–2021, working with Prof. Leandros Tassiulas and Prof. Lin Zhong. Before that, I received my Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University in 2020 (advisor: Prof. Gil Zussman) and my B.Eng. degree in Electronic Engineering from Tsinghua University in 2014 (advisors: Prof. Zhisheng Niu and Prof. Sheng Zhou).

Interests: I am interested in the broad areas of future wireless, mobile, optical, and quantum networks as well as intelligent IoT systems. My recent research focuses on both theoretical and experimental aspects of massive antenna systems and millimeter-wave networks, optical and quantum networks, and spectrum sharing systems, and their convergence with edge cloud, energy-efficient computing, and AI/ML. I also enjoy building efficient hardware-software systems and experimental testbeds at scale.

Impacts: My research has been recognized by two IBM Academic Awards (2023, 2021), a Google Research Scholar Award (2021), the Columbia Engineering Morton B. Friedman Memorial Prize for Excellence (2021), the Columbia University Eli Jury Award (2021), a Facebook Fellowship (2019), and a Wei Family Private Foundation (WFPF) Fellowship (2014). I have received multiple paper awards from IEEE/Optica OFC’24 (Top-Scored Paper), IEEE/Optica OFC’23 (Top-Scored Paper), ECOC’23 (Best Paper Award), ACM CoNEXT’16 (Best Paper Award), ACM MobiHoc’19 (Best Paper Finalist), and IEEE MTT-S IMS’19 (Advanced Practice Paper Finalist). My Ph.D. thesis received the ACM SIGMOBILE Dissertation Award Runner-up. WiLO Networks Inc. is currently supported by NSF SBIR Phase I (TI-2108012) and Phase II (TI-2345381) awards.

I am always looking for motivated and creative B.S., M.S., Ph.D. students, and Postdocs to join my group in Duke ECE. If you are interested, please email me your CV, transcript, and a brief note about your research interests, and I would be happy to chat!

Ongoing Projects:

[Duke DST Launch] The Duke Quantum Network [Duke news]
[NSF NewSpectrum] Enabling Dense and In-situ Spectrum Monitoring via Circuits-system Co-design
[Duke Engineering BtH Initiative] Lighting a Dark Fiber Network for Hybrid Quantum-Classical Experimental Research
[NSF EAGER] An Integrated Fiber Sensing and Communication Living Lab in the Research Triangle
[SRC/DARPA JUMP 2.0] Center for Ubiquitous Connectivity (CUbiC) [CUbiC website] [center info]
[NSF SII-NRDZ] Spectrum Sharing via Consumption Models and Telemetry in an Urban FCC Innovation Zone
[NSF CISE] Medium: Softwarizing Millimeter-wave Radio Access Networks at the Edge
[NSF SWIFT] 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 Projects:

[NSF EARS] FlexICoN: Full-duplex Wireless: From Integrated Circuits to Networks (Columbia) [FlexICoN website]
[NSF CISE] EnHANTs: Energy-Harvesting Active Networked Tags (Columbia) [EnHANTs website]

Recent Talks:

[Sept. 2024] ``Scalable Wireless Digital Twins for High-delity RF Signal Mapping’’, SpectrumX AI/ML Research Community Seminar.
[Aug. 2024] ``Toward Intelligent and Efficient Optical Networks: Performance Modeling, Co-Existence, and Field Trials’’, Optica Technical Group Webinar (Optical Communications Technical Group).
More talks and videos see below…

Talk at the ACM SIGMOBILE community workshop

Overview of the COSMOS testbed at ACM MobiCom'20

My Ph.D. life at Columbia Enginering

Interviewed by WebsEdge Science

Acknowledgments: Our research projects are supported in part by NSF grants ECCS-2434131 (NewSpectrum), CNS-2330333 (EAGER), AST-2232458 (SII-NRDZ), CNS-2211944 (CISE Core), CNS-2128638 (SWIFT), and CNS-2112562 (NAI), the SRC-DARPA JUMP 2.0 program (CUbiC – Center for Ubiquitous Connectivity), a Duke Science & Technology LAUNCH Grant, a Pratt Engineering Beyond the Horizon Initiative Grant, a Google Research Scholar Award, an IBM Academic Award, an NVIDIA Academic Grant, NTT Research Grants, an ACM SIGMOBILE Student Community Grant, and NEC Labs America Research Gifts. The findings, positions, or opinions of our research projects do not necessarily represent the official policy of any of these organizations.

news

Dec 20, 2024	Two papers were accepted to OFC’24: (i) Multi-span OSNR and GSNR prediction using cascaded learning (oral), and (ii) Scalable ML models for optical transmission system management (invited talk).
Dec 17, 2024	Received an NVIDIA Academic Grant to work on building high-fidelity 3D world models and wireless digital twins leveraging our recently devloped Geo2SigMap framework.
Nov 18, 2024	The Duke FuNCtions Lab is at the ACM MobiCom’24 in Washington, D.C., where we presented two full papers, two workshop papers, five demos, and one poster. [blog post]
Nov 15, 2024	Received a Duke Science and Technology (DST) Launch Seed grant to work on building the Duke quantum networks with colleagues from the Duke Quantum Center.
Sep 01, 2024	Our paper on real-time, efficient baseband processing for mmWave networks was accepted to ACM MobiCom’24. [code]

selected publications

JOCN

Multi-Span Optical Power Spectrum Prediction Using Cascaded Learning with One-Shot End-to-End Measurement

Zehao Wang, Yue-Kai Huang, Shaobo Han, Daniel Kilper, and Tingjun Chen

Journal of Optical Communications and Networking, 2025

Invited Paper to the JOCN Special Issue on Top-Scored Papers from IEEE/Optica OFC’24

DOI Bib Code

@article{wang2025multj,
  title = {Multi-Span Optical Power Spectrum Prediction Using Cascaded Learning with One-Shot End-to-End Measurement},
  author = {Wang, Zehao and Huang, Yue-Kai and Han, Shaobo and Kilper, Daniel and Chen, Tingjun},
  journal = {Journal of Optical Communications and Networking},
  volume = {17},
  number = {1},
  pages = {A23--A33},
  year = {2025},
  publisher = {IEEE},
  doi = {10.1364/JOCN.533634},
}

MobiCom

Savannah: Efficient mmWave Baseband Processing with Minimal and Heterogeneous Resources

Zhenzhou Qi, Chung-Hsuan Tung, Anuj Kalia, and Tingjun Chen

In Proc. ACM International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MobiCom’24), 2024

DOI Bib Code

@inproceedings{qi2024savannah,
  title = {Savannah: Efficient {mmWave} Baseband Processing with Minimal and Heterogeneous Resources},
  author = {Qi, Zhenzhou and Tung, Chung-Hsuan and Kalia, Anuj and Chen, Tingjun},
  booktitle = {Proc. ACM International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MobiCom'24)},
  year = {2024},
  doi = {10.1145/3636534.3690707},
}

MobiCom

Mambas: Maneuvering Analog Multi-User Beamforming Using an Array of Subarrays in mmWave Networks

Zhihui Gao, Zhenzhou Qi, and Tingjun Chen

In Proc. ACM International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MobiCom’24), 2024

DOI Bib Code

@inproceedings{gao2024mambas,
  title = {Mambas: Maneuvering Analog Multi-User Beamforming Using an Array of Subarrays in {mmWave} Networks},
  author = {Gao, Zhihui and Qi, Zhenzhou and Chen, Tingjun},
  booktitle = {Proc. ACM International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MobiCom'24)},
  year = {2024},
  doi = {10.1145/3636534.3649390},
}

DySPAN

Geo2SigMap: High-Fidelity RF Signal Mapping Using Geographic Databases

Yiming Li, Zeyu Li, Zhihui Gao, and Tingjun Chen

In Proc. IEEE International Symposium on Dynamic Spectrum Access Networks (DySPAN’24), 2024

DOI Bib Code

@inproceedings{li2024geo2sigmap,
  title = {{Geo2SigMap}: High-Fidelity {RF} Signal Mapping Using Geographic Databases},
  author = {Li, Yiming and Li, Zeyu and Gao, Zhihui and Chen, Tingjun},
  booktitle = {Proc. IEEE International Symposium on Dynamic Spectrum Access Networks (DySPAN'24)},
  year = {2024},
  doi = {10.1109/DySPAN60163.2024.10632773},
}

JLT

Field Trial of Coexistence and Simultaneous Switching of Real-Time Fiber Sensing and Coherent 400 GbE in a Dense Urban Environment

Zehao Wang, Yue-Kai Huang, Ezra Ip, Zhenzhou Qi, Gil Zussman, Dan Kilper, Koji Asahi, Hideo Kageshima, Yoshiaki Aono, and Tingjun Chen

IEEE/Optica Journal of Lightwave Technology, 2024

Invited Paper to the JLT Special Issue on Top-Scored Papers from IEEE/Optica OFC’23

DOI Bib

@article{wang2024field,
  title = {Field Trial of Coexistence and Simultaneous Switching of Real-Time Fiber Sensing and Coherent 400 {GbE} in a Dense Urban Environment},
  author = {Wang, Zehao and Huang, Yue-Kai and Ip, Ezra and Qi, Zhenzhou and Zussman, Gil and Kilper, Dan and Asahi, Koji and Kageshima, Hideo and Aono, Yoshiaki and Chen, Tingjun},
  journal = {IEEE/Optica Journal of Lightwave Technology},
  volume = {42},
  number = {4},
  pages = {1304--1311},
  year = {2024},
  publisher = {IEEE/Optica},
  doi = {10.1109/JLT.2023.3319166}
}