Prof. Chen received his bachelor degree in Veterinary Science from Northwest Agriculture University in 1985 and Master of Biology and Molecular Biology from New Mexico State University in the United States in 1993. He also received his PhD degree of Microbiology from the New York University School of Medicine in 1996. He then started his post-doctoral research training under the supervision of Professor David Ho, an internationally renowned AIDS researcher since 1997. In 2002, Prof. Chen was promoted to Assistant Professor at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Centre of the Rockefeller University. In 2007, he became the founding director of the AIDS Institute at the HKU Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine. In 2014, he was promoted to tenured professor.
Prof. Chen spent most of his career in conducting research on AIDS vaccines, SARS vaccines, and animal models used in vaccines and AIDS pathogenic mechanisms. He currently serves as the editorial board member of a number of international scientific journals including “AIDS” and “JAIDS”, the organizing committee and reviewer of the International AIDS Conference, the chairman of the Hong Kong Society of Immunology, the executive member of the Chinese AIDS Vaccine Initiative, the expert consultant and the committee member of the scientific committee of the Key Laboratory of Immunology of the Ministry of Health. Prof. Chen was an honorary professor at the Institute of Experimental Animals of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (CAMS). He was also a visiting professor at Wuhan University and Nanjing University, and a member of the AIDS advisory board of the Hong Kong Department of Health. Prof. Chen is a member of the executive board of the Hong Kong AIDS Foundation.
Over the years, Prof. Chen has secured research grants from Hong Kong Education Grants Committee for TRS (Theme-based Research Scheme)/CRF (Collaborative Research Fund)/GRF (General Research Fund), Hong Kong Department of Health Fund, Hong Kong AIDS Trust Committee Fund, Hong Kong Pneumoconiosis Fund; National 973, 11th to 13th Five-Year Plan Major Infectious Diseases Special topics, National Natural Science Foundation of China; and the US NIHRO1, amFAR, Gates Foundation, etc.
In recent years, he has also participated in the organisation of AIDS 2014, Cent Gardes 2015, and APACC 2016-2019 AIDS and AIDS vaccine and other major international conferences. He has published hundreds of scientific papers in internationally renowned magazines, and has been invited by international academic conferences and universities to publish research reports. In 2019, he won the "Knowledge Exchange Award" of HKU Li Ka Shing School of Medicine, and the only "Outstanding Knowledge Exchange Award" at HKU.
Prof. Chen published his research on the use of soluble PD-1 based DNA vaccine in the Journal of Clinical Investigation in 2013. This novel vaccine strategy is currently covered by patents from the World Intellectual Property Organisation, the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the European Patent Office and the People's Republic of China State Intellectual Property Office Patent.