Prominent blockchain researcher Chen Jing has left the United States to join Tsinghua University in Beijing as a full-time professor.
The award-winning scholar and chief scientist said she would bring “a dual perspective from academia and industry” to help develop computational economics in China, according to an announcement by the university on Tuesday.
Chen, who returned to China last year after spending 15 years in the US, said she aimed to address gaps in domestic research and develop cutting-edge theories to improve China’s blockchain technology, Tsinghua said in its statement.
Chen earned her bachelor’s degree in computer science from Tsinghua in 2004 and her master’s from the same university in 2007. She completed her PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2012 under the mentorship of Silvio Micali, a Turing award laureate.
“I simply wanted to conduct the best research. At the time, the best research in computer science was in the US,” Chen said in a video posted on Tsinghua’s social media account.
“Now it is time to share the experience I’ve gained in academia and industry with my students in China, and leverage my international influence to support Tsinghua and its computer science department.”
Chen said she was committed to training younger researchers in computational economics, equipping them to identify and solve real-world societal problems.
She has been particularly focused on studying how multiple participants, such as humans and artificial intelligence, interact within modern computer systems like e-commerce and social networks.
According to her Tsinghua faculty profile, Chen has designed and analysed such systems to optimise their efficiency and security, and to withstand events such as hacking or cyberattacks.
Chen said she believed that improved computational efficiency in large economic systems could increase the predictive accuracy of economic cycles, leading to better evaluation of policy outcomes.
During her doctoral studies, Chen applied a groundbreaking approach in computational theory to major issues in the field of cognitive game theory, such as developing mechanisms to ensure truthful behaviour in auctions, even when participants may collude, according to Tsinghua.
After earning her PhD, Chen joined New York’s Stony Brook University as an assistant professor, where her team challenged the blockchain trilemma hypothesis, which refers to inherent limitations of the technology, suggesting that security, scalability and decentralisation cannot be simultaneously optimised.
Chen’s team developed and proved a new consensus protocol that gained industry attention.
She later served as chief scientist and head of theory research at Algorand Technologies, a blockchain platform created by her PhD adviser, focusing on efficient and secure cryptocurrency transactions using a proof-of-stake mechanism.
Chen’s contributions have earned her numerous accolades, including the US National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development Award in 2016. She also completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
Full text
Prominent blockchain researcher Chen Jing has left the United States to join Tsinghua University in Beijing as a full-time professor.
The award-winning scholar and chief scientist said she would bring “a dual perspective from academia and industry” to help develop computational economics in China, according to an announcement by the university on Tuesday.
Chen, who returned to China last year after spending 15 years in the US, said she aimed to address gaps in domestic research and develop cutting-edge theories to improve China’s blockchain technology, Tsinghua said in its statement.
Chen earned her bachelor’s degree in computer science from Tsinghua in 2004 and her master’s from the same university in 2007. She completed her PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2012 under the mentorship of Silvio Micali, a Turing award laureate.
“I simply wanted to conduct the best research. At the time, the best research in computer science was in the US,” Chen said in a video posted on Tsinghua’s social media account.
“Now it is time to share the experience I’ve gained in academia and industry with my students in China, and leverage my international influence to support Tsinghua and its computer science department.”
Chen said she was committed to training younger researchers in computational economics, equipping them to identify and solve real-world societal problems.
She has been particularly focused on studying how multiple participants, such as humans and artificial intelligence, interact within modern computer systems like e-commerce and social networks.
According to her Tsinghua faculty profile, Chen has designed and analysed such systems to optimise their efficiency and security, and to withstand events such as hacking or cyberattacks.
Chen said she believed that improved computational efficiency in large economic systems could increase the predictive accuracy of economic cycles, leading to better evaluation of policy outcomes.
During her doctoral studies, Chen applied a groundbreaking approach in computational theory to major issues in the field of cognitive game theory, such as developing mechanisms to ensure truthful behaviour in auctions, even when participants may collude, according to Tsinghua.
After earning her PhD, Chen joined New York’s Stony Brook University as an assistant professor, where her team challenged the blockchain trilemma hypothesis, which refers to inherent limitations of the technology, suggesting that security, scalability and decentralisation cannot be simultaneously optimised.
Chen’s team developed and proved a new consensus protocol that gained industry attention.
She later served as chief scientist and head of theory research at Algorand Technologies, a blockchain platform created by her PhD adviser, focusing on efficient and secure cryptocurrency transactions using a proof-of-stake mechanism.
Chen’s contributions have earned her numerous accolades, including the US National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development Award in 2016. She also completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.