Ryan Chen

Ryan Chen will receive his PhD in 2025 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he works under the guidance of Wei Zhang.

Chen is an arithmetic geometer of exceptional creativity with great technical expertise. His research focuses on themes surrounding the Gross–Zagier-type formula for high-dimensional Shimura varieties, where the main aim is to relate the arithmetic intersection numbers of algebraic cycles to the special values of L-functions and their derivatives. He has established, in great generality, a new Arithmetic Siegel–Weil formula, linking the Faltings heights of Kudla–Rapoport 1-cycles on integral models of unitary Shimura varieties to the first derivatives, near the central point, of non-singular Fourier coefficients of Siegel–Eisenstein series. His work has opened up new directions in understanding the arithmetic-geometric meaning of the sub-leading terms of various L-functions, including notable examples such as the standard L-functions and the adjoint L-functions associated to cohomological automorphic representations of unitary groups over totally real number fields.

Ryan Chen has been appointed as a Clay Research Fellow for five years beginning 1 July 2025. He will be based initially at Princeton University.

Photo: Jieru Chen