Songcan Chen

Also known as Song-Can CHEN, Song-Can Chen, 陈松灿

Songcan Chen is an AI researcher whose work includes fuzzy clustering, pattern classification, and time-series learning. He earned degrees in mathematics and computer applications, joined Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (NUAA) in 1986, completed a PhD there in 1997, and became a professor in 1998. He became an IAPR Fellow in 2018 for contributions to fuzzy clustering, feature extraction, and pattern classification, and coauthored a 2021 survey on open-set recognition. In November 2024, he held leadership roles in Chinese AI societies; in 2026, he coauthored iTimER, a self-supervised framework for irregularly sampled time series. As of October 2026, he is a professor at NUAA and leads its Pattern Recognition and Neural Computing group.

Now at: Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Works: 409
Citations: 14,866
h-index: 57
Badges: Loyal

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

1983–1985

Mathematics and computer applications

He earns a B.S. in mathematics at Hangzhou University in 1983 and an M.S. in computer applications at Shanghai Jiaotong University in 1985.
1986–1998

Assistant lecturer at NUAA

In January 1986, he joins NUAA as an assistant lecturer. He earns a Ph.D. in communication and information systems there in 1997, then becomes a full-time professor in its computer science and engineering department in 1998.
2018

An IAPR Fellowship

He becomes an IAPR Fellow in 2018 for contributions to fuzzy clustering, feature extraction, and pattern classification.
2021

An open-set recognition survey

In 2021, he coauthors Recent Advances in Open Set Recognition: A Survey for IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence. The survey covers open-set recognition definitions, model representations, datasets, evaluation criteria, and algorithm comparisons.
November 2024

Leadership in Chinese AI societies

In November 2024, he directs the Chinese Artificial Intelligence Society's Machine Learning Committee, serves as an executive director of the society, and is the second president of the Jiangsu Province Artificial Intelligence Society.
2026

Beyond Observations at AAAI

In 2026, he coauthors Beyond Observations: Reconstruction Error-Guided Irregularly Sampled Time Series Representation Learning, an AAAI paper.
2026

iTimER for irregular time series

In 2026, the paper introduces iTimER, a self-supervised pre-training framework for irregularly sampled time-series representations. It models reconstruction errors and generates pseudo-observations for unobserved timestamps.
As of October 2026

Leading a pattern-recognition group

As of October 2026, he is a professor at NUAA and leads its Pattern Recognition and Neural Computing group.

Career

Since 1986Nanjing University of Aeronautics and AstronauticsAssistant lecturer
2019–2026Ministry of Industry and Information Technology
2008–2013Nanjing University
2004–2006Chinese Academy of Sciences

Education

1997Nanjing University of Aeronautics and AstronauticsPh.D. in communication and information systems
1985Shanghai Jiao Tong UniversityM.S. in computer applications
1983Hangzhou UniversityB.S. in mathematics