About

Xu Chen is a Teaching Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Illinois in 2018. Before returning to academia, he spent eight years in industry, working with IBM Systems Group and Apple Inc., where he gained extensive experience in electronic systems design and validation. His research and teaching bridge academia and industry, focusing on uncertainty quantification and scientific machine learning for electronic design automation, with particular emphasis on modeling, optimization, and heterogeneous integration in microelectronic packaging and circuits. Prof. Chen serves as an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Components, Packaging, and Manufacturing Technology and as the General Chair of the 2026 IEEE Conference on Electrical Performance of Electronic Packaging and Systems (EPEPS). He is a faculty researcher with the Center for Advanced Electronics through Machine Learning (CAEML), where his work advances the integration of machine learning into electronic design automation and system modeling. Through his teaching and mentorship, he has fostered a strong culture of intellectual curiosity and practical problem-solving in both classroom and research settings.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Internal medicine
• Biochemistry
• Systems engineering
• Mathematics
• Biology
• Immunology
• Economics
• Chemistry
• Combinatorics
• Food science
• Microbiology
• Medicine
• Mathematical optimization
• Distributed computing
• Econometrics
• Operations management
• Engineering

Selected publications

• Asymptotic Optimality of Open-Loop Policies in Lost-Sales Inventory Models with Stochastic Lead Times

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023 · 7 citations

  • Economics
  • Econometrics
  • Mathematical optimization
  PublisherDOI

• Dynamic Task Offloading for Mobile Edge Computing with Hybrid Energy Supply

  Tsinghua Science & Technology · 2022 · 124 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  • Distributed computing

  Mobile edge computing (MEC), as a new distributed computing model, satisfies the low energy consumption and low latency requirements of computation-intensive services. The task offloading of MEC has become an important research hotspot, as it solves the problems of insufficient computing capability and battery capacity of Internet of things (IoT) devices. This study investigates task offloading scheduling in a dynamic MEC system. By integrating energy harvesting technology into IoT devices, we propose a hybrid energy supply model. We jointly optimize local computing, offloading duration, and edge computing decisions to minimize system cost. On the basis of stochastic optimization theory, we design an online dynamic task offloading algorithm for MEC with a hybrid energy supply called DTOME. DTOME can make task offloading decisions by weighing system cost and queue stability. We quote dynamic programming theory to obtain the optimal task offloading strategy. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of DTOME, and show that DTOME entails lower system cost than two baseline task offloading strategies.

  DOI

• Effects of a β-type glycosidic polysaccharide from <i>Flammulina velutipes</i> on anti-inflammation and gut microbiota modulation in colitis mice

  Food & Function · 2020 · 71 citations

  • Chemistry
  • Microbiology
  • Biochemistry

  Using the Flammulina velutipes polysaccharide (FVP) extracted from our previous study, herein, we investigated the improvement of this starch-free β-type glycosidic polysaccharide in alleviating dextran sodium sulfate-induced ulcerative colitis (UC) in mice. The absolute and relative abundance of intestinal microbes in the mouse feces were both determined by 16s RNA gene sequencing. The results from the histological analysis indicate that FVP treatment reduced the symptoms of UC, up- or down-regulated the relative gene expression levels in the colon tissue, and enhanced the capacity of metabolic and biogenesis in the UC mice, as predicted by PICRUSt. 11 species of gut microbes including Lactobacillus, Bifidobacterium, and Clostridium associated with UC symptoms were analyzed by correlation analysis. Our findings suggest that FVP can alleviate the UC symptoms in mice by regulating specific gut microbes, improving the understanding of the functional activity of FVPs as prebiotics.

  DOI

Recent grants

• Tractable Approximation of Dynamic Decision Making Models Under Uncertainty

  NSF · $150k · 2010–2014

• Coordinated Pricing and Inventory Management

  NSF · $289k · 2009–2012

• Cost/Value Allocations in Supply Chain Operations

  NSF · $300k · 2015–2019

• Matching Supply and Demand Through Dual-Sourcing

  NSF · $331k · 2016–2020

• Collaborative Research: Optimization Approach to Collaborative Games in Supply Chain Management

  NSF · $226k · 2007–2011

Frequent coauthors

• David Simchi‐Levi

  29 shared

• Lin Ke

  Agency for Science, Technology and Research

  25 shared

• Wenjie Li

  25 shared

• Ali Maatouk

  25 shared

• Enrico Zio

  Centre de Recherche sur les Risques et les Crises

  25 shared

• Harvey Bao

  Huawei Technologies (France)

  25 shared

• Fadhel Ayed

  25 shared

• Dandan Miao

  North China Electric Power University

  25 shared

Labs

• Xu Chen Research GroupPI

Awards & honors

• IEEE EDAPS Best Symposium Paper (2017)
• IEEE MTT-S NEMO Best Student Paper (2020)

Similar researchers at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

• Jiawei Hanh-146
• Maria T. Grosse Perdekamph-141
• Gan Zhangh-134
• Jeffrey S. Mooreh-130
• Shuming Nieh-128