Sitan Chen
Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Harvard University
I am an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Harvard's John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, where I am an Associate Faculty at the Kempner Institute and a member of the Theory of Computation group, the ML Foundations group, and the Harvard Quantum Initiative.
I am broadly interested in algorithmic questions about learning from data. In recent years my work has revolved around two threads: developing the mathematical and scientific foundations of diffusion-based generative modeling, and building a theory of learning in quantum systems.
My work has been generously supported by an NSF CAREER award CCF-2441635, an NSF Small (joint with Anurag Anshu) CCF-2430375, an NSF SLES (joint with Boaz Barak and Sham Kakade) IIS-2331831, and the Harvard Dean's Competitive Fund for Promising Scholarship.
Previously I was an NSF postdoc at UC Berkeley under the wise guidance of Prasad Raghavendra. I received my PhD in EECS from MIT as a member of CSAIL and the Theory of Computation group. I was very fortunate to be advised by Ankur Moitra and supported by an MIT Presidential Fellowship and a PD Soros Fellowship. Prior to MIT, I studied mathematics and computer science as an undergraduate at Harvard, where I had the pleasure and honor of working with Salil Vadhan and Leslie Valiant.
Emailsitan (at) seas (dot) harvard (dot) edu
Current Group
- Shansan Gong (postdoc, 2026-)
- Alkis Kalavasis (postdoc, 2026-)
- Liang Mao (HQI postdoc, 2026-, co-advised with Anurag Anshu, Jordan Cotler, and Susanne Yelin)
- Weiyuan Gong (PhD, 2023-) Von Neumann Fellowship
- Aayush Karan (PhD, 2023-, co-advised with Yilun Du) PD Soros Fellow NDSEG Kempner Graduate Fellowship
- Jaeyeon Kim (PhD, 2024-, co-advised with Sham Kakade) Ilju Scholarship Jump Trading Fellowship Kempner Graduate Fellowship
- Junseo Lee (PhD, 2026-, co-advised with Anurag Anshu and Jordan Cotler) Kwanjeong Fellowship
- Walt McKelvie (PhD, 2024-, co-advised with Salil Vadhan) NSF GRFP
- Liye Wang (undergrad, 2026-)
- Alvan Arulandu (undergrad, 2026-)
Former Group Members
- Yunchao Liu (HQI postdoc, 2024-2025, → IBM Quantum, co-advised with Anurag Anshu)
- Marvin Li (undergrad, 2023-2025, → Stanford CS PhD) Hoopes Prize Fay Prize
- Arif Kerem Dayi (undergrad, 2024-2025, → MIT EECS PhD) Hoopes Prize CRA Finalist
- Zhihan Zhang (undergrad, 2024-2025, → Caltech CS PhD)
- Kevin Cong (undergrad, 2025-) Hoopes Prize
Teaching
Recent Papers
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Selected Papers
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Thesis
-
Rethinking Algorithm Design for Modern Challenges in Data Science pdfPhD Thesis, MIT, 2021
Service
- PC Member: FOCS 2026, QIP 2026, FOCS 2025, STOC 2024, SODA 2024, RANDOM 2023, ICALP 2022, FOCS 2022
Other
- A note showing an exponential separation between adaptive and non-adaptive quantum learning protocols (joint with Weiyuan Gong and Zhihan Zhang)
- Workshop on quantum learning at FOCS 2024
- A general-audience exposition I wrote for Nature Physics News & Views (2024) on [Haah-Kothari-Tang]
- Reading group on cryptographic lower bounds for learning at Simons Institute, Fall '21
- Some piano performances I've given: 2021, 2019a, 2019b, 2018, 2017