I am a professor at University of Neuchatel and TU Delft. I am the director of Distributed Learning Systems Lab. I returned to academia, after a decade of industry experience at the IBM Research Zurich Lab. My research interests lie in the distinct areas of deep machine learning, big data systems, and privacy enhancing technology. My research is supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation, Dutch National Science Foundation the European Union, IBM Research, ABB, TU Delft, Aegon, Tata Steel, and ASML. My recent research focuses on generative AI and distributed machine learning algorithms and systems leads me to address following exciting research areas and questions.

I have multiple open PhD positions. If you are interested in them, please drop me an email at lydiaychen@ieee.org.

Generative AI systems: how to discover the unnkown via the power of generative models, ranging from tables, time series to graph? I am exploring large langague models and diffusion models in collaboration with scientiest in natural science and manufactoring.

Privacy-preserving learning systems by synthetic data: how to maximize the knowledge of while maintaining data privacy ? I am combining the deep generative models and privacy-enhancing technologies as a privacy-preserving data sharing solution.

Robust and privacy-preserving learning systems: how to make learning algorithms robust against adversaries that maliciously manipulate data input? I am designing practical strategies and theories against attackers, e.g., free riders, and thief.

Federated machine learning systems: how to decentralizedly learn deep learning models on heterogeneous clients who contentiously encounter new learning tasks and data domain shift? I am working on domain adaptation, and continual learning in FL.