Peter Pin-Shan Chen (; born 3 January 1947) is a Taiwanese American computer scientist. He is a (retired) distinguished career scientist and faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University and Distinguished Chair Professor Emeritus at LSU. He is known for the development of the entity–relationship model in 1976.
Biography
Born 1947 in Taichung, Taiwan, Peter Chen received a B.S. in electrical engineering in 1968 at the National Taiwan University, and a Ph.D. in computer science/applied mathematics at Harvard University in 1973. In 1970, he worked one summer at IBM. After graduating from Harvard, he spent one year at Honeywell and a summer at Digital Equipment Corporation.
From 1974 to 1978 Chen was an assistant professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management. From 1978 to 1983 he was an associate professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA Management School). From 1983 to 2011 Chen held the position of M. J. Foster Distinguished Chair Professor of Computer Science at Louisiana State University and, for several years, adjunct professor in its Business School and Medical School (Shreveport). During this time period, he was a visiting professor once at Harvard in '89-'90 and three times at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (EECS Dept. in '86-'87, Sloan School in '90-'91, and Division of Engineering Systems in 06-'07). From 2010 to 2020, Chen was a Distinguished Career Scientist and faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University, U.S.A.
Besides lecturing around the world, he has also served as an (honorary) professor outside of the U.S. In 1984, under the sponsorship of the United Nations, he taught a one-month short course on databases at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China, and was awarded as Honorary Professor there. Then, he went to Beijing as a member of the IEEE delegation of the First International Conference on Computers and Applications (the first major IEEE computer conference held in China). From 2008 to 2014, he was an Honorary Chair Professor in the Institute of Service Science at National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan. Starting in 2016, he is an Honorary Chair Professor in the Department of Bioengineering and Bioinformatics, Asia University (Taiwan).
Chen has served as an advisor for government agencies and corporations. He is a member of the advisory board of Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate of National Science Foundation (2004-2006) and the United States Air Force Scientific Advisory Board (2005-2009).
Awards and honors
Chen's original paper is one of the most influential papers in the computer software field based on a survey of more than 1,000 computer science professors documented in a book on "Great Papers in Computer Science". Chen's work is also cited in a book Software Challenges published by Time-Life Books in 1993 in the series on "Understanding Computers." Chen is recognized as one of the pioneers in a book on "Software Pioneers". He is listed in Who's Who in America and Who's Who in the World.
Chen has received many awards in the fields of Information Technology. He received the Data Resource Management Technology Award from the Data Administration Management Association (DAMA International) in New York City in 1990. He was elected as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), IEEE, and ER. He won the Achievement Award in Information Management in 2000 from DAMA International. He was an inductee into the Data Management Hall of Fame in 2000. He received the Stevens Award in Software Method Innovation in 2001. In 2003, Chen received the IEEE Harry H. Goode Memorial Award at the IEEE-CS board of governors meeting in San Diego. He was presented with the ACM - AAAI Allen Newell Award at the ACM Banquet in San Diego in June 2003 and International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) in Acapulco in August 2003. Chen is also the recipient of the Pan Wen-Yuan Outstanding Research Award in 2004. In June 2011 in Jeju Island, Korea, Chen received the Transformative Achievement Medal from Software Engineering Society and the Society for Design and Process Science. In 2021, he received the Leadership Award from IEEE Technical Committee of Service Computing (TCSVC).