Research:

Jia Chen’s current research focuses on quantifying greenhouse gas emissions and understanding the metabolism of air pollutants in urban environments. Besides the development of novel, compact optical sensors, she has established the worldwide first city sensor network based on the novel method of differential column measurements (MUCCnet, https://atmosphere.ei.tum.de/). This pioneering work enables long-term assessment of urban greenhouse gas emissions. A more detailed description of our research activities can be found in Research Focus

Her major research path can be summarized as follows: She has developed the differential column measurement method (Chen et al. 2016), based on which she and her team have established the worldwide first permanent urban column sensor network MUCCnet (Dietrich et al. 2021). With MUCCnet and additional in-situ measurements, they were able to discover and quantify unaccounted sources such as Oktoberfest (Chen et al. 2020, Dietrich et al. 2023) and highly underestimated sources (Forstmaier et al. 2023) in urban areas. To infer urban emissions from observations, she and her team have developed novel modeling approaches, based on Bayesian inversion, compressed sensing, computational fluid dynamics, and machine learning, that cover different scales and are particularly suited for urban application, given the highly heterogeneous landscape and source types (Toja-Silva et al. 2017; Jones et al. 2021; Zanger et al. 2022, Gensheimer et al. 2022; Zhao et al. 2023).

Her research is supported among others by ERC Consolidator Grant, EU Horizon 2020, United Nations Environment Programme, NSF, NASA, and German Research Foundation. She was also recently selected as an expert to attend the IPCC scoping meeting for the Special Report on Climate Change and Cities.

CV:

Jia Chen studied electrical engineering at the University of Karlsruhe (Dipl.-Ing.) and was awarded a PhD with highest distinction (summa cum laude) from TUM. From 2011 to 2015 she was a postdoctoral fellow in the Environmental Science & Engineering Department at Harvard University (advisor: Steven C. Wofsy). Since 2015, Jia Chen has been Professor of Environmental Sensing and Modeling at the TUM Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. She is also Associate in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. In 2020, Prof. Chen was named as Germany’s “Top 40 unter 40” by the magazine Capital and in 2021 she was selected to be a member of the Global Young Academy, where she chairs the working group “Citizen Science for the 2030 SDG Agenda”.

Publications and Patents:

Jia Chen has authored and co-authored 2 books and 2 book chapters, 2 chapters in WMO report, 80 peer-reviewed journal publications and more than 170 conference contributions. Further, she has filed 12 patents, of which 9 are international patents. h‑index: 33, i10‑index: 72.

Complete list of patents and publications

ORCID  Researchgate  Dissertation

Selected Awards and Recognition:

Teaching:

• Umweltsensorik und Modellierung
• Advanced Seminar Environmental Sensing
• Gemeinschaftspraktikum Electromagnetic Sensors and Measurement Systems
• Lab Course Innovative Atmospheric Sensing Devices

Additional affiliations:

• Associate at Harvard University:
  http://atmos.seas.harvard.edu/lab/people/people.htm 
  http://people.seas.harvard.edu/~jiachen/  
• Member of TUM Department of Civil, Geo and Environmental Engineering:
  https://www.bgu.tum.de/en/faculty/chairs-and-professors/ 
• Member of TUM Institute of Advanced Study (IAS):
  www.ias.tum.de/en/active-fellows/chen-jia/

My Thesis:

• Doktorarbeit: Compact laser-spectroscopic gas sensors using Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers
• Diplomarbeit: Analyse von CDMA-Verfahren für PLC auf zukünftigen Bordnetzen im Kraftfahrzeug
• Studienarbeit: Entwicklung eines VHDL-Codes zur Nachbildung eines Impulsstörerszenarios für Kfz Powerline Kanäle (Patent: DE102005063273B4)