Letian Chen
Research Scientist at Waymo
Atlanta, Georgia, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolLetian (Zac) Chen is a research scientist specializing in reinforcement learning and human-robot interaction, leveraging a PhD from Georgia Tech and dual bachelor’s degrees in psychology and computer science from Peking University. With 11 years of experience across academia and industry, he has advanced offline and safe learning from heterogeneous, suboptimal demonstrations for applications from autonomous driving to healthcare decision support and Mars rover planning. His work combines algorithmic rigor in inverse reinforcement learning with hands-on deployment—running policies on motion simulators and contributing to Waymo and Toyota Research Institute projects. Zac’s interdisciplinary perspective ties computational RL to cognitive systems (e.g., dopamine, hippocampus, prefrontal cortex), a thread that informs his approaches to intent inference and hierarchical/meta learning. Colleagues know him for shipping practical solutions that bridge lab research and real-world systems, and for a personable, collaborative style reflected in his longtime love of programming and making friends.
11 years of coding experience
9 years of employment as a software developer
Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Computer Science, Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Computer Science at Georgia Institute of TechnologyBachelor of Science - BS, PSYCHOLOGY, Bachelor of Science - BS, PSYCHOLOGY at Peking University
Chinese, English
Stackoverflow
1reputation
0reached
0answers
0questions
Github Skills (72)
autolayout10
computer-vision10
layout10
dsl10
dlib10
snapkit9
swift9
toolbox9
python9
dropdown-menu9
machine-learning9
deep-learning8
universe8
mongodb8
easing7
Programming languages (8)
Github contributions (5)
sunshineclt/PedstrianPrediction
Jun 2018 - Jun 2018
Contributions:29 commits, 25 pushes, 1 branch in 18 days
sunshineclt/NKU-Helper
Feb 2015 - Dec 2017
Contributions:316 commits, 11 PRs, 181 pushes in 2 years 10 months
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