Greetings! I am Xiaofeng Chen (Xiaofeng may be pronunced in the way similar to the maybe word "shawphone"), and I usually publish academic papers under Ricky X. F. Chen. I am now a professor of the School of Mathematics, and a distinguished scholar of the Huangshan Mountain (a.k.a. Yellow Mountain) program at Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, China. I received my PhD in Mathematics at Virginia Tech in U.S.A. under the supervision of Prof. Christian Reidys, and then worked for Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia after that. I received my M.S. and B.S. at Nankai University and SWUST, respectively. By the time I started to pursue my PhD, I had worked for the telecom company Huawei, as a wireless research engineer, for more than five years.Research Interests: (i) enumerative and algebraic combinatorics, including enumerating maps, Hurwitz numbers, RNA structures and other classical combinatorial objects; (ii) network structures and associated dynamics, and their applications.Select Papers ( grad indicates graduate students):[24] Ricky ChenIndependent decisions collectively producing a long information dissemination path with a foreseen lower-bounded length in a network, arXiv:2108.02777.[23] Zi-Wei Bai grad, Ricky ChenExplicit formulas for a family of hypermaps beyond the one-face case, https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2309.11618[22] Ricky Chen, Xin-Yu Liu grad, Meng-Ting Wang gradA new invariant for detecting graph isomorphism (GI): [t, p]-spectrum, (1) (PDF) A new invariant for detecting graph isomorphism: [t, p]-spectrum (researchgate.net)[21] Ricky ChenThe minimum number of chains in a noncrossing partition of a poset, Filomat, 38(8) (2024), 2915--2922. arXiv: 2302.00874.[20] Ricky Chen A universal recursion with applications in Hurwitz numbers and hypermaps, submitted.[19] Ricky Chen, Yu-Chen Ruan grad Self-reciprocal polynomials connecting unsigned and signed relative derangements, Journal of Difference Equations and Applications, 29(8) (2023), pp. 781-798. https://doi.org/10.1080/10236198.2023.2253331[18] Ricky ChenOn products of permutations with the most uncontaminated cycles by designated labels,Journal of Algebraic Combinatorics, 57 (2023), pp. 1163-1171. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10801-023-01221-x[17] Zi-Wei Bai, Ricky ChenNew equidistributions on plane trees and decompositions of 132-avoiding permutations, arXiv:2209.01961.[16] Ricky ChenA genus interpolation theorem on products involving general one-to-one maps,submitted.[15] Ricky Chen, Henning Mortveit, Christian Reidys Periodic points independent of undate schedule of monotone sequential Boolean networks are all fixed points, submitted.[14] Ricky Chen, Christian Reidys, Michael Waterman RNA secondary structures with given motif specification: combinatorics and algorithms, Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, 85 (2023), #21.[13] Ricky Chen, Joseph McNitt, Henning Mortveit, Ryan Pederson, Christian Reidys Lipschitz continuity under toric equivalence for asynchronous Boolean networks, Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science, 33 (2023), #023118.[12] Ricky Chen A versatile combinatorial approach of studying products of long cycles in symmetric groups, Advances in Applied Mathematics, 133 (2022), Article 102283. (34 pages)[11] Ricky ChenCombinatorially refine a Zagier-Stanley result on products of permutations, Discrete Mathematics, 343(8) (2020), Article 111912. (5 pages)[10] Ricky Chen, Andrei Bura, Christian Reidys D-chain tomography of networks: a new structure spectrum and an application to the SIR process, SIAM Journal on Applied Dynamical Systems,18(4) (2019), pp. 2181--2201.[09] Ricky Chen A new bijection between RNA secondary structures and plane trees and its consequences, Electronic Journal of Combinatorics, 26(4) (2019), P4. 48. (14 pages)[08] Ricky Chen, Christian Reidys Linear sequential dynamical systems, incidence algebras, and Mobius functions, Linear Algebra and its Applications, 553 (2018), pp. 270--291.[07] Ricky Chen, Christian Reidys On the local genus distribution of graph embeddings,Journal of Combinatorial Mathematics and Combinatorial Computing, Vol. 101 (2017), pp. 157--173.[06] Ricky Chen Signed relative derangements, reversal distance, and the signed Hultman numbers, Ars Combinatoria, 147 (2017), 281--288.[05] Ricky Chen，Christian ReidysA combinatorial identity concerning plane colored trees and its applications, Journal of Integer Sequences, 20 (2017), Article 17.3.7.[04] Ricky Chen, Christian Reidys Plane permutations and applications to a result of Zagier-Stanley and distances of permutations, SIAM Journal on Discrete Mathematics, 30(3) (2016), pp. 1660--1684.[03] Ricky Chen A brief introduction to Shannon's information theory, The Net Advance of Physics (MIT): Information, 2016.[02] Ricky Chen A refinement of the formula for k-ary trees and Gould-Vandermonde’s convolution, Electronic Journal of Combinatorics, 15(1) (2008) #R52. [01] Ricky Chen, Louis ShapiroOn Sequences Gn Satisfying Gn = (d + 2)Gn−1 − Gn−2, Journal of Integer Sequences, 10 (2007), Article 07.8.1. Books: [1] Xiaofeng Chen, New Insight into Communication: from theory to practice, China Machine Press, Beijing, 2013.04. Select Patents:1. Xiaofeng Chen, Yongxia Lv, Yan Cheng, Method, apparatus and system for transmitting information bits, (known as dual Reed-Muller code), granted countries/regions and patent no.: US8068548B1, CN102404072B, EP2466777B1, KR101288817B1, ES2531889T3, RU2504910C2, etc.2. Xiaoan Fan, Yongxia Lv, Xiaofeng Chen, Method and apparatus for coding and processing acknowledgement information, US9408203B2, CN102594493B, EP2654231B1, etc3. Xiaofeng Chen, Method of communication, relay, and communication system, CN101753198B4. Xiaofeng Chen, Communication method for control channel and apparatus, US9553700B2, CN103503329B, EP2698929B15. Xiaofeng Chen, Communication method and apparatus, and receiving method and apparatus in wireless local area network, US9591650B2, EP2854474B1CoauthorsChristian Reidys, Michael Waterman, Henning Mortveit, Louis Shapiro, Andrei Bura, Ryan Pederson