Yongxin Chen was born in Ganzhou, Jiangxi, China. He received his B.S. in mechanical engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, in 2011, and a Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering, under the supervision of Tryphon Georgiou, from University of Minnesota in 2016. He currently serves as an assistant professor in the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. Before joining Georgia Tech, he had a one-year research fellowship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center from August 2016 to August 2017 and was an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Iowa State University from August 2017 to August 2018.

He has conducted researches in stochastic control, optimal transport and optimization. His current research focuses on the intersection between control, machine learning and robotics with the goal to develop theoretical foundations and algorithms for robots so that they are able to accomplish complex tasks autonomously and reliably.