Jia Chen | ECE@UCR

Current students

PhD students co-advised with Vagelis Papalexakis:

Het Patel, starting from Sep. 2023

Research interests: LLM Denoising, Robust VLM, LLM uncertainty quantification, Transportation safety, Vision foundation models

2025 Amazon Research summer intern

BS at UCR

Kishor Kumar Bhaumik, starting from Sep. 2024 (Homepage: https://kishor-bhaumik.github.io)

Research intersts: Human activity recognition, Computer vision, Time series

2025 LLNL-UCR Data Science Challenge

MS at Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea

Undergraduate student

- Ma Kenya Gonzalez Hernandez, starting from January 2026

University Honors Capstone Project: An Assistive Desk Robot for Real-Time Posture Monitoring and Task Management

Past students

@UCR

Alec Peter Blevins, 2025 NSF Data Science REU, home institute Connecticut College

Yuvaraj Vagula, 2025 NSF Data Science REU, home institute Cleveland State U.

Isabela Sforcin, 2025 NSF Data Science REU, home institute UCR

Marina Wild, 2025 NSF Data Science REU, home institute UCR

Ryan Kenyon Chung, 2025 NSF Data Science REU, home institute UW Madison

Diego Gutierrez, 2025 NSF CREST REU, home institute UTRGV

Artemisa Trevino, 2025 NSF CREST REU, home institute UTRGV

Pigar Biteng, 2025 NSF CREST REU, home institute UTRGV

Samantha Ocana, 2025 NSF CREST REU, home institute UTRGV

Douglas Garcia, 2025 NSF CREST REU, home institute UTRGV

Bryce Graw (2024 summer REU), undergraduate at San Diego Mesa Community College

Tam Dinh (2024 summer REU), undergraduate at Cal Poly Pomona

Shaan Pakala (2024 summer REU), undergraduate at UCR

Oziel Sauceda (2024 summer REU), undergraduate at UTRGV

Teresa Garza (2024 summer REU), undergraduate at UTRGV

Mario Camarena (2024 summer REU), undergraduate at UTRGV

Blake Dickerson (Undergraduate researcher, Apr. 2022-Dec. 2023), MS in Data Science at UCLA

Het Patel (Undergraduate researcher, Feb. 2022-Aug. 2023), PhD at UCR

Hugo Baca (2023 fall REU), Engineer at Metrolink

Rayyan Zaid (2023 fall REU)

Biqian Cheng (PhD, Jan. 2023 - Sep. 2023), PhD at UCR

Fengchun Fan (Undergraduate researcher, Apr. 2022-Jun. 2023)

Chantal Arguelles (Undergraduate researcher, Sep. 2022-Aug. 2023)

Karam Shanti (Undergraduate researcher, Sep. 2022-Aug. 2023)

Angelina Chen (2023 summer REU), undergraduate at Emory University

Michael Chen (2023 summer REU), undergraduate at University of Massachusetts Amherst

Ethan Villalobos (2023 summer REU), undergraduate at UTRGV

Hector Lugo (2023 summer REU), undergraduate at UTRGV

Pablo Santos (2023 summer REU), undergraduate at UTRGV

Damian Gomez (2023 summer REU), undergraduate at UTRGV

Leonel Ramirez (2022 summer REU), undergraduate researcher with Fatemeh (Noosheen) Nazari at UTRGV

Alan Urteaga (2022 summer REU), graduate researcher with Constantine Tarawneh at UTRGV

Shaoyu Kevin Tu (Undergraduate researcher, Mar. 2022-Jul. 2022), PhD at UCR

Yuchen Zhu (Undergraduate researcher, Mar. 2022-Aug. 2022)

Faris Khan (Undergraduate researcher, Jan. 2022-Sep. 2022)

Mohammed Asaad (Undergraduate researcher, Jan. 2022-Oct. 2022)

Jaden Ambicki (Undergraduate researcher, Sep. 2022-Sep. 2022)

Mariana Machado Garcez Duarte (PhD, Sep. 2021 - Jun. 2022), PhD at Université libre de Bruxelles

Derek Xu (AI intern from Ayala High School, Sep. 2021 - Jun. 2022), undergraduate at Boston University

@UTRGV

Ms. Dalia Orozco (MS), Teacher at the Department of Defense Education Activity

Ms. Lizeth Figueroa (MS), Electrical Engineer at the Raytheon Intelligence & Space

Mr. Md Imrul Kaish (MS), Data Analyst at American Sun Components

Mr. Juan Alvarez (BS), Electrical Engineer at National Instruments

Mr. Sergio Alejandro (BS), Maintenance Supervisor at Las Ventanas Industrial Park, Mexico

Ms. Neri Hernandez (BS)

Ms. Sthefania Espinosa (BS)

Mr. Dante Salgado (BS)

Mr. Dario Jimenez (BS)

Research for undergraduate opportunities

NSF REU program: REU Site: Experience the Full Data Science Pipeline through Research and Practice

The appliation for 2025 summer program is closed.
To learn more about this REU program, please visit our website: https://sites.google.com/ucr.edu/ucr-ds-reu.

Google exploreCSR REU program

The application is closed.
To learn more about this program, please visit our website: https://sites.google.com/view/explorecsr2022ucr.

Funding

External support

Evangelos Papalexakis (PI), Yue Dong, Jia Chen (Co-PI) "Collaborative Research: Promoting Regional Opportunities for Practical and Engaged Learning in Artificial Intelligence," National Science Foundation, No. 2524228 , $400K, Years 2025-2030. (in collaboration with Yunfei Hou (lead PI), Xiangyu Li, Kimberly Collins at CSUSB; No. 2524227).
Mohamadhossein Noruzoliaee (Lead PI), Qi Lu, Fatemeh Nazari, Ping Xu, Rahul Mangharam, Evangelos Papalexakis, Yue Dong, and J. Chen (sub-award PI), "CISE MSI: RPEP: CPS: Trustworthy AI for Transportation Cyber-Physical Systems," National Science Foundation, No. 2431569 , $1.2M (UCR portion: $300K), Years 2025-2027.
Paea LePendu (PI), Tamar Shinar, Mariam Salloum, Allan Knight, Neftali Watkinson Medina, Huinan Liu, Analisa Flores, and Jia Chen (Senior personnel) "The Computing Scholars Experience Lab Program," National Science Foundation, No. 2424458, $2M, Years 2024-2030.
Mariam Salloum (PI), Analisa Flores (PI), Vassilis Tsotras, Shuheng Zhou, Cecilia Cheung, Wei Vivian Li, Jun Li, Neftali Watkinson Medina, Evangelos Papalexakis, Bruce Babcock, Kevin Esterling, Paea LePendu, Jia Chen (Co-PI), John Korah, Lan Yang, Tingting Chen, Yunfei Hou, Ronald Salloum, Hani Aldirawi, Jeremy Aikin, Qingquan Sun, Jamal Ashraf, Kasey Nguyen, Mark Lehr, Laurie McQuay-Peninger, Caroline Hutchings, Tracy Kocher, "Greater LA Data Science Pathways (GLADS-PATH)", The California Education Learning Lab, $1.275M (UCR portion: $700K), Years 2023-2027.
Constantine Tarawneh (Lead PI), Mohsen Amjadian, Arturo Fuentes, Mustapha Rahmaninezhad, Ping Xu, Heinrich Foltz, Angela Chapman, Dimitris Rizos, David Allen, Aemal Khattak, Evangelos Papalexakis, Yue Dong, Jia Chen (sub-award PI), "The US DOT University Transportation Center for Railway Safety, Smart Technologies for Safer Railways," U.S. Department of Transportation, $10M (UCR portion: $495K federal fund + 50% cost share), Years 2023-2028.
Jia Chen (PI), Elaheh Sadredini, and Mariam Salloum "Promoting data science research culture for first-generation, women, and underrepresented minority students in Inland Empire," Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Incorporated, $10,500, Year 2023.
Jia Chen (PI), Yingzhuo Joyce Fu, Mariam Salloum, Paea LePendu, Xinping Cui, Analisa M Flores, Wenxiu Ma, Wei Vivian Li, Weixin Yao, Evangelos Papalexakis, and Vassilis Tsotras "REU Site: Experience the Full Data Science Pipeline through Research and Practice," National Science Foundation, No. 2244480, $405,122, Years 2023-2026.
Jia Chen (PI), Mariam Salloum, Basak Guler, Elaheh Sadredini, Ronald Salloum "Data Science and Machine Learning Workshop," Google Research - exploreCSR, $32,000, Years 2022-2023.
C. Tarawneh (Lead PI), M. Noruzoliaee, F. Nazari, J. Li, A. Chapman, N. Dimakis, T. Sardarmehni, S. Akundi, W. Dong, M. Pokhrel, B. Zou, A. Talebpour, E. E. Papalexakis, and J. Chen (sub-award PI), "CREST - Center for Multidisciplinary Research Excellence in Cyber-Physical Infrastructure Systems (MECIS)," National Science Foundation, No. 2112650, $5M (UCR portion: $495K), Years 2021-2026.
Y. Zhou (PI), H. Foltz, N. Wongkasem, Z. Qiao, and J. Chen (Former Co-PI; I forfeited a Co-PI due to my move), "GAANN Fellowships in Electrical and Computer Engineering at UTRGV," Department of Education, No. P200A210140, $415,290, Years 2021-2024.
S. Mohanty (PI), Y. Chu, D. Kim, and J. Chen (Co-PI), “Finding Unmodeled Signals in Noisy Big Data: An Integrated Multi-Disciplinary Approach,” Department of Defense, Research and Education Program for HBCU/MI Equipment/Instrumentation, No. W911NF2110169, $551,889, Years 2021-2022.

Internal support

Jia Chen (PI), "A New Perspective for Exploring Multiview Data: Algorithms and Applications," UCR Academic Senate, $9,000, Years 2022-2023.
Jia Chen (PI), "Engaged Scholar and Artist Award," UTRGV, $2,000, Year 2020.

Invited talks

Tensor decomposition for graph mining, Statistics Dept. Seminar at UCR, October 2022 (hosted by Wenxiu Ma).
Multiview learning for knowledge discovery, CS Seminar at Texas Tech University, August 2022 (hosted by Jingjing Yao).
Covid-19 Symptom Discovery Using Discriminative Data Analytics, lightening talk on "The Impacts of Social Media on the Health of Individuals, Communities and Society" Workshop at UCR, August 2022 (hosted by Vassilis Tsotras).
Multiview learning for knowledge discovery, UCR Data Science Seminar, April 2022 (hosted by Ahmed Eldawy).
Discriminative knowledge discovery, ECE Department Colloquium at UCR, November 2021 (hosted by Salman Asif and Hyoseung Kim).
Representation learning of multiview data, CS Department Colloquium at Marquette University, September 2021 (hosted by Nasim Yahyasoltani).
Multiview learning: algorithms and applications, ECE Department at UC Riverside, May 2021 (hosted by Amit Roy Chowdhury).
Current, on-going, and planned efforts for broadening participation, CS Department at UC Riverside, May 2021 (hosted by Christian Shelton)
Learning shared and discriminative information from multiview data, EE Department Colloquium at UT Arlington, November 2020 (hosted by Alice Yuze Sun).
Machine Learning, SPIE Chapter seminar, August 2020 (hosted by Zhijun Qiao).
New machine learning algorithms for data analytics of multiple datasets, ECE Department at San Diego State University, March 2019 (hosted by Ashkan Ashrafi).
New machine learning algorithms for data analytics of multiple datasets, ECE Department at University of Detroit Mercy, March 2019 (hosted by Mark Paulik).
New machine learning algorithms for data analytics of multiple datasets, CS Department at UTRGV, March 2019 (hosted by Fitratullah Khan).
New machine learning algorithms for data analytics of multiple datasets, School of Computer Science and Engineering at California State University, San Bernardino, February 2019 (hosted by George M. Georgiou).
New machine learning algorithms for data analytics of multiple datasets, Electrical and Biomedical Department at University of Vermont, February 2019 (hosted by Tian Xia).

Public media

2024 IEEE News for the Inland Impire Data Science Workshop: www.computer.org/publications/tech-news/insider-membership-news/ie-data-science-workshop

The IEEE official video for the event can be found at

2021 UCR News for NSF CREST Center: Engineering faculty join center to improve STEM pipeline for underrepresented students

2021 UCR News for DNA paper: Data mining tools combat COVID-19 misinformation and identify symptoms

Honors and Awards

2024 UCR Omnibus Travel Award

2022 UCR Regents Faculty Fellowship

2020 NSF NSF ENG CAREER Proposal Writing Workshop Travel Award

2020 UTRGV Engaged Scholar and Artist Award

2015 UTA Research in Motion Scholarship

2014 UTA Research in Motion Scholarship