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. I am also the co-founder of BlueGen.ai. My research is supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation, Dutch National Science Foundation the European Union, IBM Research, ABB, and TU Delft.

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

  • Privacy-preserving learning systems by synthetic data: how to maximize the knowledge of while maintaining data privacy ? I am exploring the deep generative models to synthesize data.
  • Robust 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.