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Xi Chen

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Email:

xc13(AT)stern(DOT)nyu(DOT)edu

Address:

NYU Stern School of Business
TOPS Department

Biography

I am a Full Professor and Andre Meyer Faculty Fellow in the Department of Technology, Operations, and Statistics at the Stern School of Business, New York University. I also hold affiliated faculty appointments at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and the Center for Data Science, and I am a member of the NYU Blockchain Lab.

In 12/2025, I joined Compass Lexecon as an Expert Affiliate, focusing on artificial intelligence, digital platforms, Web3, and crypto-economics.

From 2021–2023, I served as a Principal Scientist at Amazon Ads, where I led a science team developing large-scale forecasting and delivery systems for digital advertising across video and streaming partners. I have collaborated with Google, Meta, Adobe, JP Morgan, and Bloomberg, receiving competitive faculty research awards from each organization for work combining machine learning, optimization, and market design.

Before joining NYU Stern, I completed a postdoctoral fellowship with Professor Michael I. Jordan at the University of California, Berkeley. I received my PhD from Carnegie Mellon University, and previously earned an MS in Operations Research from the ACO Program in the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon.

See a more detailed bio on my NYU Stern homepage.

Research Interests

Foundation Models, LLMs, and Agentic AI

  • Post-training and preference alignment (e.g., RLHF, comparison-based methods)

  • Evaluation, hallucination mitigation, robustness, and trustworthy AI

  • Reasoning and Memory systems for agentic AI

Statistical Learning, Optimization, and Scalable Systems

  • Online, streaming, and high-dimensional inference

  • Stochastic and distributionally robust optimization

  • Large-scale distributed ML systems and compute-efficient model tuning

AI for Operations, Digital Platforms, and E-commerce

  • Online learning and bandits, dynamic pricing, and assortment optimization

  • Recommender systems, ad auctions, delivery optimization, and marketplace design

  • Applied ML for forecasting, allocation, and digital operations

Blockchain, Web3, and Quantitative Markets

  • Mechanism design in decentralized ecosystems and token economics

  • AI-driven DeFi, automated market making, and quantitative modeling

Recent News

  1. 12/2025 I joined Compass Lexecon as an Expert Affiliate specializing in AI, digital platforms, and crypto-economics. Announcement: AI and Crypto Expert Professor Xi Chen Affiliates with Compass Lexecon.

  2. 05/2025 My first paper on LLM post-training, ComPO: Preference Alignment via Comparison Oracles, was posted.

  3. 04/2025 I was elected as a Fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA).

  4. 04/2025 My research paper, Context-Based Dynamic Pricing with Online Clustering, won the 2025 POM Michael Pinedo Best Retail Operations and Revenue Management Paper Award.

  5. 12/2024 My research paper, Bayesian-Nash-Incentive-Compatible Mechanism for Blockchain Transaction Fee Allocation, was accepted by Operations Research. My very first paper at OR about the Blockchain.

  6. 11/2024 I am honored to be appointed as the Associate Editor of Journal of the American Statistical Association (Theory and Methods).

  7. 05/2024 My forthcoming book, Web3: Blockchain, the New Economy, and the Self-Sovereign Internet, co-authored with a Harvard Business professor, a Yale Computer Science professor, and professional experts, will be published by Cambridge University Press this fall.

  8. 05/2024 My research paper, Proof-of-Learning with Incentive Security, proposes an new method to verify learning computations. This approach serves as a Proof-of-Useful-Work alternative to replace hash computations in blockchain mining.

  9. 05/2024 I was elected as a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS).

  10. 11/2023 I am honored to be appointed as the Area Editor of Operations Research for the Department of Machine Learning and Data Science.

  11. 08/2023 I am honored to be promoted as the Full Professor at NYU Stern School of Business.

  12. 12/2022 My paper Bayesian-Nash-Incentive-Compatible Mechanism for Blockchain Transaction Fee Allocation won the Best Paper Award at NeurIPS Workshop on Decentralization and Trustworthy Machine Learning in Web3.

  13. 09/2022, My book The Elements of Joint Learning and Optimization in Operations Management co-edited with Stefanus Jasin and Cong Shi have been published in Springer Series in Supply Chain Management.

  14. 06/2022, I am honored to be appointed as Andre Meyer Faculty Fellow by NYU Stern School of Business.

  15. 01/2022, I am elected to COPSS Leadership Academy.

  16. 11/2021, I am appointed as an AE of the Annals of Statistics.

  17. 06/2021, I become an Elected Member of the International Statistical Institute (ISI).

  18. 09/2017, I was listed on the Forbes 30 Under 30 in North America

Editorial Appointments