Dr. Chao Tian

Dr. Chao TIAN

 

Professor
Fellow of IEEE
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Texas A&M University
Email: chao Dot tian AT tamu DOT edu
Phone: 979-458-7822
Address: ROOM 301R, WEB Building, 3128 TAMU, College Station TX
Google Scholar

Announcements and News

  • Apr. 2026: Congratulations to Wenyuan on the acceptance of three ICML papers!
  • Mar. 2026: Congratulations to Yuting on the acceptance of his first-authored paper, “GridLDM: Unified Latent Diffusion for Cross-Domain Language-Conditioned Power-System Time-Series Synthesis,” to ACM e-Energy 2026!
  • Mar. 2026: Congratulations to Yuting for passing his dissertation defense!
  • Jan. 2026: Yu-Shin’s first-authored paper, “OD-Stega: LLM-Based Relatively Secure Steganography via Optimized Distributions,” has been accepted by EACL 2026. Congratulations to Yu-Shin for her first NLP conference paper!
  • Nov. 2025: Wenyuan is selected as a winner of the ECE Departmental Poster Event (two years in a row)!

Dr. Tian obtained his B.E degree from Tsinghua University, Beijing China, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Cornell University, Ithaca NY. He worked at AT&T Labs-Research (previously known as the Shannon Labs) as a researcher on communication and signal processing for seven years, before returning to academia. He was with the University of Tennessee Knoxville for a few years before joining Texas A&M University, where he is now a professor. Dr. Tian is a Fellow of IEEE.

  • IEEE Fellow
  • Best Paper Award at Workshop on Machine Learning and Compression @ NeurIPS 2024: “Transforms learn variable-order Markov chains in context”.
  • Best Paper Award at the first ‘Learn to compress’ workshop @ ISIT 2024: “Staggered quantizers for perfect perceptual quality: A connection between quantizers with common randomness and without”.
  • 2023-2024 IEEE Information Theory Society Distinguished Lecturer.
  • 2022 ECE Department Star Faculty Award.
  • Coauthor of 2020-2021 IEEE Data Storage Best Student Paper Award (awarded in 2022): “Capacity-achieving private information retrieval codes from MDS-coded databases with minimum message size” in IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory 2020.
  • 2019 NetApp Faculty Fellowship.
  • Coauthor 2017 IEEE Jack Wolf ISIT Best Student Paper Award: “A generic transformation for optimal repair bandwidth and rebuilding access in MDS codes” in ISIT 2017.
  • 2014 IEEE Data Storage Best Paper Award: “Characterizing the rate-region of the (4,3,3) exact-repair regenerating codes” in IEEE JSAC May 2014.
  • AT&T Key Contributor Award: For technical contribution in AT&T / 2010, 2011, 2013.
  • Liu-Memorial Award, Cornell University: For excellence in graduate study and research / 2004.
Current Students

  • Ramkumar GANAPATHY
  • Yu-Shin HUANG
  • Mohammad RAHIMI
  • Wenyuan ZHAO
Alumni
   Postdoctoral Researcher
  • Tao GUO, ECE, TAMU, Dec. 2018-Apr. 2020; now Associate Professor at Southeast University, China.
 Ph.D. Students
  • Kai ZHANG, Ph.D. degree ECE/TAMU, May 2020; now with Amazon Inc.
  • Tianli ZHOU, Ph.D. degree CE/TAMU, May 2020; now with Google Inc.
  • Ruida ZHOU, Ph.D. degree ECE/TAMU, Aug. 2023; now with Amazon AGI.
  • Ali MENATI, Ph.D. degree ECE/TAMU (co-advised with Dr. Le Xie), May 2025.
  • Yuting CAI, Ph.D. degree ECE/TAMU, May 2026; now with Solidigm Inc.
 Master Students
  • Sara MOUSAVI, CS Master degree, UTK, Dec. 2017; obtained her CS Ph.D. degree at UTK and first job with Meta Inc.
  • Vineet GARG, ECE Master degree, TAMU, May 2019; first job with Apple Inc.
  • Siqi FAN, ECE Master degree, TAMU, Dec. 2019; obtained his CE Ph.D. degree and first job with Goldman Sacks.
  • Jianfeng SONG, ECE Master degree, TAMU, Dec. 2019; obtained his CE Ph.D. degree and first job with Siemens Digital Industries Software, Inc.
  • Rachel YEH, ECE Master degree, TAMU, Dec. 2019; first job with Michaels, Inc.
  • Lizi ZHANG, ECE Master degree, TAMU, May 2020.
  • Tianrui CHEN, ECE Master degree, TAMU, Dec. 2021; currently a Ph.D. student at Northwestern Polytechnical University China.
  • Wenjing CHEN, ECE Master degree, TAMU, Dec. 2022; currently pursuing Ph.D. degree at TAMU.
  • Chandra Sekhar TEDLA, ECE Master degree, TAMU, May 2023; first job at Aira Techonologies Inc.
  • Tianle ZHANG, ECE Master degree, TAMU, Dec. 2024; currently pursuing Ph.D. degree at TAMU.
  • Peter JUST, ECE Master degree, TAMU, Dec. 2025.
 Visiting Students
  • Chengyuan QIAN, Jun. 2021-Apr. 2022; currently pursuing Ph.D. degree at TAMU.
  • Min CHENG, Aug. 2019-Dec. 2019, TAMU visiting undergraduate student, University of Science and Technology of China; obtained her CE Ph.D. degree from TAMU 2025 and now with Amazon Inc.
  • Zekuan ZHANG, Jul. 2019-Sep. 2019, TAMU visiting undergraduate student, Southeast University (China).
  • Wenjing CHEN, Jul. 2018-Oct. 2018, TAMU visiting undergraduate student, University of Science and Technology of China.
  • Lei ZHENG, Oct. 2017-Apr. 2019, TAMU visiting Ph.D. student, Southwest Jiaotong University; currently Assistant Professor at Guangzhou University, China.
  • Jie LI, UTK visiting Ph.D. student, Oct. 2015-Oct. 2016, Southwest Jiaotong University; now as Senior Researcher at Huawei Technology, Hong Kong.
Texas A&M University
  • ECEN 601: Mathematical Methods for Signal Processing
  • ECEN 689: Advanced Optimization Techniques and Analysis
  • ECEN 629: Applied Convex Optimization
  • ECEN 446: Information Theory, Inference, and Learning
  • ECEN 314: Signal and Systems
  • ECEN 303: Random Signals and Systems Syllabus

The University of Tennessee Knoxville
  • ECE 611: Convex Optimization / Fall 2016
  • ECE 342: Fundamentals of Communication / Spring 2016, Spring 2017
  • ECE 644: Codng and Information Theory / Fall 2015
  • ECE 342: Analog Communication, AM and FM / Fall 2014, Spring 2015
Columbia University
  • ELEN E6884: Topics in Data Compression / Spring 2011
  • ELEN E6718: Algebraic Coding Theory / Fall 2011, 2012, 2013
  • ELEN E6712: Communication Theory / Spring 2013
Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne
  • IC-62: Source Coding Theory and Practice / Winter 2006
Editorship
  • Lead Guest Editor for IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Information Theory (JSAIT) on Data Compression: Classical Theories Meet Modern Advances / 2026-
  • Lead Guest Editor for IEEE BITS Magazine (IEEE Information Theory Magazine) on Data Compression and Machine Learning / 2025-
  • Guest Editor for IEEE Selected Areas on Communications-Special Issue on Rethinking the Information Identification, Representation, and Transmission Pipeline: New Approaches to Data Compression and Communication / 2023-2024
  • Editor for IEEE BITS Magazine (IEEE Information Theory Magazine) / 2024-
  • Guest Editor for IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Information Theory (JSAIT) on Distributed Coding and Computation / 2021-2022
  • Guest Editor for Entropy–Special Issue on Information Theory and Machine Learning / 2021
  • Guest Editor for IEEE Selected Areas on Communications-Special Issue on Private Information Retrieval, Private Coded Computing over Distributed Servers, and Privacy in Distributed Learning / 2020-2021
  • Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Information Theory / Jan. 2020-Jan. 2023
  • Guest Editor for Entropy–Special Issue on Information and Coding for Distributed Storage / 2018-2019
  • Guest Editor for Science China–Special Issue on Distributed Storage Coding / 2018
  • Editor of IEEE Transactions on Communications / Jan. 2016-Jan. 2021
  • Associate Editor of IEEE Signal Processing Letters / Feb. 2012-Feb. 2014
Services
  • IEEE Information Theory Society Secretary / 2025-
  • IEEE Information Theory Society Board of Governors / 2025-
  • IEEE Information Theory Society Conference Committee Member / 2024-
  • IEEE Information Theory Society Paper Award Committee Member / 2023-2024
  • IEEE Communication Society Data Storage Paper Award Committee Co-chair / 2018