About Me

Xu Chen is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Washington, where he holds the Bryan T. McMinn Endowed Professorship for Research Recognition. He also serves as Director of the Boeing Advanced Research Collaboration at UW and Director of Robotics Education in the UW College of Engineering. Through BARC, he leads an interdisciplinary Boeing-UW partnership for elevating the future of flight. This commitment to connecting fundamental research with engineering practice also shapes his own work at the intersection of dynamic systems, physical intelligence, and controls. By bringing these fields together, he seeks to better understand and engineer smart machines that positively impact people’s lives. He leads the MACS Lab, where his team develops sensing, actuation, and automation and AI for physical systems. He is a recipient of the U.S. National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the SME Sandra L. Bouckley Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award, the IFAC Mechatronic Systems Outstanding Young Researcher Award, and the Young Investigator Award from ISCIE/ASME International Symposium on Flexible Automation. He is an alumnus of the US NAE Frontiers of Engineering.