Zuowei Shen’s Homepage
Zuowei SHEN (沈佐伟)
Distinguished Professor
Department of Mathematics
National University of Singapore
Zuowei Shen is a Distinguished Professor and Director of the Institute for Mathematical Sciences at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He received his bachelor’s degree from Hohai University in 1982 and briefly taught there before pursuing graduate studies in Canada. He obtained his M.Sc. in 1987 and Ph.D. in 1991 from the University of Alberta, followed by postdoctoral research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He joined NUS in 1993, was promoted to Professor in 2002, and appointed Distinguished Professor in 2009. From 2013 to 2021, he held the Tan Chin Tuan Centennial Professorship at NUS.
At NUS, he has held several senior leadership positions, including Vice Provost, Dean of the Graduate School, Dean of the Faculty of Science, and Head of the Department of Mathematics. For his contributions to university service and academic development, he was awarded the Singapore Public Administration Silver Medal.
His primary research interest is the mathematical foundation of data science, with a focus on developing rigorous theories and efficient algorithms and applying them to solve problems arising in data science. He draws inspiration from practical challenges to drive theoretical innovation. He has contributed to approximation theory, wavelet theory and applications, image processing, compressed sensing, and machine learning, with advances spanning both theory and application. Details of his research can be found at here.
He has published over 170 papers, highlighting his interdisciplinary research philosophy, which is deeply rooted in applied mathematics and seamlessly extends across diverse fields. His work appears prominently across a broad spectrum of applied mathematics journals, as evidenced by publications in eight SIAM journals: Math. Anal., Numerical Anal., Sci. Computing, Matrix Anal., Optim., Control Optim., Imaging Sci., and Multi-Scale Modeling.
Building on this foundation and the algorithms he developed, his research extends into engineering and computer science, with papers in IEEE Trans. Image Process., IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell., IEEE Trans. Medical Imaging, Phys. Med. Biol., J. Optical Soc. Amer., J. Vib. Acoust., Neural Computation, and J. Mach. Learning Research, alongside contributions to leading conferences such as CVPR, ICML, and NeurIPS.
Furthermore, practical applications inspired him to develop mathematical theories and concepts that not only enhance the understanding of these applications but are also applicable across a wide range of fields, leading to publications in journals that bridge applied and pure mathematics, such as J. Math. Pures Appl., as well as in pure mathematics venues like J. Amer. Math. Soc., J. Eur. Math. Soc., J. Funct. Anal., Duke Math. J., Amer. J. Math., and Adv. Math. Here are citations of his publications.
He has been invited to speak at major international conferences, including the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) and the International Congress on Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM). His contributions have been recognized with several honors, such as the Singapore National Science Award and the Wavelet Pioneer Award from the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE). He is a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society (AMS) and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), and has been elected to the Singapore National Academy of Science, the European Academy of Sciences (EurASc), and the World Academy of Sciences for the advancement of science in developing countries (TWAS).
He is also active in academic service, with editorial roles on leading journals such as Forum of Mathematics Pi and several journals of SIAM and AMS. His other international contributions include membership on the ICM Speaker Selection Panels, the ICIAM Scientific Program Committee, the ICIAM Prize Committee, and the TWAS Membership Advisory Committee for Mathematical Sciences.
You can find the Chinese version of this biography by clicking on this link.