Prof. CHEN Minghua (陈名华) B. Eng. and M.S. (Tsinghua University), Ph.D. (University of California, Berkeley)

ACM Distinguished Member, IEEE Fellow


Professor, School of Data ScienceAssistant Director, Hong Kong Institute for Data Science


Contact Information Office: LI-6381
Phone: (+852) 3442-4206
Email: minghua.chen@cityu.edu.hk
Web: Personal Homepage

Research Interests Machine Learning in Power Systems
Online Optimization and Algorithms
Distributed and Combinatorial Optimization
Energy Systems (e.g., smart power grids and energy-efficient datacenters)
Intelligent Transportation Systems
Delay-Constrained Networking


Professional Activity Panel member, Green and Digital Transition, Academy of Finland, 2021 - present
Executive Committee Member (currently served as Award Chair), ACM SIGEnergy, 2018-present
Steering Committee Chair, ACM e-Energy, 2018 - 2020
Senior Editor, IEEE Systems Journal, 2021 - present
Area Editor, ACM SIGEnergy Energy Informatics Review, 2021 - present
Associate Editor, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, 2014 - 2018
General Chair, ACM e-Energy 2017
TPC Co-Chair, International Teletraffic Congress 2022 (ITC34)
TPC Co-Chair, ACM MobiHoc 2020
TPC Co-Chair, ACM e-Energy 2016
Advisory TPC member, IEEE INFOCOM 2022
Advisory TPC member, ACM MobiHoc 2021


Prof. Chen received his B.Eng. and M.S. degrees from the Department of Electronic Engineering at Tsinghua University. He received his Ph.D. degree from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at University of California Berkeley. He was with Microsoft Research Redmond and Department of Information Engineering, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, before joining the School of Data Science, City University of Hong Kong.
Prof. Chen received the Eli Jury award from UC Berkeley in 2007 (presented to a graduate student or recent alumnus for outstanding achievement in the area of Systems, Communications, Control, or Signal Processing) and The Chinese University of Hong Kong Young Researcher Award in 2013. He also received several best paper awards, including IEEE ICME Best Paper Award in 2009, IEEE Transactions on Multimedia Prize Paper Award in 2009, ACM Multimedia Best Paper Award in 2012, and IEEE INFOCOM Best Poster Award in 2021. He also co-authors several papers that are Best Paper Award Runner-up/Finalist/Candidate of flagship conferences including ACM MobiHoc in 2014 and ACM e-Energy in 2015, 2016, 2018, and 2019. Prof. Chen serves as TPC Co-Chair, General Chair, and Steering Committee Chair of ACM e-Energy in 2016, 2017, and 2018 - 2021, respectively. He also serves as Associate Editor of IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking in 2014 - 2018. He receives the ACM Recognition of Service Award in 2017 for the service contribution to the research community. He is currently a Senior Editor for IEEE Systems Journal (2021- present), an Area Editor of ACM SIGEnergy Energy Informatics Review (2021 - present), and an Executive Committee member of ACM SIGEnergy (2018 - present). He is an ACM Distinguished Member and an IEEE Fellow.
Prof. Chen's recent research interests include online optimization and algorithms, machine learning in power system operations, intelligent transportation systems, distributed optimization, delay-constrained network coding, and capitalizing the benefit of data-driven prediction in algorithm/system design.
For more information including publication, please visit Prof. Chen's homepage.
Recruitment: I am constantly looking for motivated graduate students and postdocs who have strong mathematical skills and interests in optimization, algorithms, energy systems, machine learning, network coding, and intelligent transportation. Candidates with strong system building capability are also very welcome to apply. Please contact me with your CV if interested.


Awards and Achievements 1998 “Champion of Tsinghua University Soccer League” Tsinghua University.
2001 “Maxine Pao Memorial Fellowship” University of California Berkeley.
2004 “Management of Technology in China Fellow” University of California Berkeley.
2005 “Award for Outstanding Self-financed Students Abroad” Chinese Government .
2007 “Eli Jury Award” Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California, Berkeley. presented to a graduate student or recent alumnus for outstanding achievement in the area of Systems, Communications, Control, or Signal Processing. [Eli Jury Award -- Berkeley]
2009 “Best Paper Award” IEEE International Conference on Multimedia & Expo (ICME) 2009.
2009 “Multimedia Prize Paper Award” IEEE Transactions on Multimedia . The Multimedia Prize Paper Award is an annual award for an original paper in the field of multimedia published in the IEEE Transactions on Multimedia in the previous three calendar years.
2012 “Best Paper Award” ACM Multimedia 2012.
2013 “Young Researcher Award” The Chinese University of Hong Kong . The Young Researcher Award offered by the University is to recognize research accomplishments of young faculty members.
2013 “StarTrack Visiting Young Faculty (declined)” Microsoft Research Asia.
2014 “Best Paper Award Candidate (top 3)” ACM MobiHoc 2014.
2015 “Best Paper Award Candidate” ACM e-Energy 2015.
2016 “Best Paper Award Runner-Up x2” ACM e-Energy 2016. Two of our papers are both Best Paper Award Runner-Up.
2017 “ACM Recognition of Service Award” ACM. In appreciation of contributions to ACM e-Energy 2017.
2018 “Best Paper Award Finalist” ACM e-Energy 2018.
2019 “Best Paper Award Finalist” ACM e-Energy 2019.
2020 “ACM Recognition of Service Award” ACM. In appreciation of contributions to ACM MobiHoc 2020.
2020 “Distinguished Member” ACM. for outstanding scientific contributions to computing.
2021 “Best Poster Award” IEEE INFOCOM 2021.
2021 “Elevation to IEEE Fellow” IEEE. for contributions to delay-critical networked systems.



Industrial and Societal Impact [2006] Prof. Chen’s PhD work was acquired by Truvideo Inc. to provide video services for Verizon and Sprint.
[2011] The Celerity system developed by Prof. Chen's team for multi-party video conferencing achieves a video throughput 2.5x of that of Apple iChat and Skype, in Internet experiments across Hong Kong, the US, and Canada.
[2012] New coding Primitives co-developed by Prof. Chen have been incorporated into solutions implemented in Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows 8.1, and Windows Azure Storage.
[30/09/2013] The WISER system developed by Prof. Chen's team for indoor white space networking is covered in a joint press release by CUHK and Microsoft. WISER also received a number of news coverage.
[2/10/2016] The WISER system developed by Prof. Chen's team on indoor white space networking for enabling Super WiFi is covered in a technical article on Yahoo! News.
[16/10/2017] The CHASE algorithm developed by Prof. Chen's team for energy generation scheduling in Microgrids is reported in the university press release and also a number of news coverage.



Major Grant Inno-HK Project Fund, "AI-Powered Financial Technologies", Co-PI, 500 millions HKD, 2020-2024
HKUST-MIT Research Alliance Consortium Innovative Technology Fund, ``A Sparse Recover Approach for High-Throughput Energy-Efficient Wireless Networks'', Co-I, 12 millions HKD, 2014 -2016 (phase I) and 2017 - 2019 (phase II)
Hong Kong RGC CRF Fund, ``Problems, Solutions, and Optimization for Modern Clouds'', Co-PI, 5.4 millions HKD, 2015-2018.
Hong Kong RGC Theme Based Scheme Grant, ``Smart Solar Energy Harvesting, Storage, and Utilization'', Co-PI, 60 millions HKD, 2014-2019.
China 973 Youth Program Fund, ``Harnessing Heterogeneous Overlapping Wireless Networks: From Theory to Technology'', Co-PI, 5 millions RMB, 2013-2018.
China 973 Program Fund, ``Reconfigurable Information Communication and Networking Architecture'', Co-I, 30 millions RMB, 2012-2017.
Hong Kong UGC Area of Excellence (AoE) Fund, ``Institute of Network Coding'', Co-I, 108 millions HKD, 2010-2017.



Last update date : 03 Dec 2021