Academic Staff

Research interests

Unmanned aerial vehicles, autonomous vehicles,  sensor fusion, navigation, computer vision, dynamics, advanced control, autopilot, situational awareness, decision making, path planning, mission planning, fault detection and condition monitoring, safety, Bayesian inference, dual control, active learning, collision avoidance, system integration, verification and validation, uncertainty, autonomous systems, safety, flight tests, agriculture, precision farming, environment monitoring, remote sensing, intelligent manufacturing, wave energy.  

Professor Chen currently holds Chair Professor of Robotics and Autonomous Systems. He is an international renowned scholar at the forefront of control and autonomous vehicles.  He made pioneering and long-lasting contributions in nonlinear disturbance observer-based control, model predictive control and unmanned aerial vehicles. Ranging from large scale fixed-wing cargos to helicopters and small remote sensing quadrotors, he has been working in unmanned aerial vehicles for more than 20 years.   With the expertise in the development and application of control and autonomous system technologies in a wide range of areas from aerospace, automotive to agriculture, environment monitoring and disaster managements, he published more than 350 papers in international journals and conferences with over 24,000 citation and h-index of 63 (Google Scholars).  Moreover, he attracted wide support from the U.K. government and industry with a grant portfolio of over £12 million which showed his strong impact in academic research and industry transfer. In the “World’s Top 2% Scientists” by Stanford University, he was ranked 30^th globally and 2^nd in the UK for being the most influential researcher in the field of Industrial Engineering & Automation in 2024

Professor Chen is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE), The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) and the Advance HE (formerly the Higher Education Academy).  He was also awarded the Established Career Fellowship from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) from 2020 to 2025, and the only awardee in the subject of Control Engineering so far.  Besides, he was elected as Changjiang Chair Professor by the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China in 2013.

Professor Chen obtained his Bachelor of Engineering degree in Industrial Automation from Jiangsu University, China in 1986.  He further received his Master of Science degree and Doctor of Philosophy degree, both in Control Engineering from Northeastern University, China in 1989 and 1991 respectively.  Professor Chen started his academic career in Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, China as a Lecturer in the Department of Automatic Control in 1991 and was then promoted to Associate Professor in the same department in 1993.  In 1997, he moved to the University of Glasgow, Scotland to work as a Research Associate and was subsequently converted to academic track as a Lecturer in 2000.  Since late 2000, he joined the Department of Aeronautical and Automotive Engineering at Loughborough University, U.K. as a Lecturer and was then promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2006. Since 2012, he has been appointed Chair Professor in Autonomous Vehicles.  He set up the Loughborough Centre for Autonomous Systems and Control in 2012 and developed it into a centre of a significant international profile.