After spending a year abroad, he joined Massachusetts Institute of Technology and completed his Master’s in Mechanical Engineering in 1993.

He completed his dissertation research with Donald E. Ingber and George M. Whitesides on "Engineering the adhesion of cells to substrates", and received a Ph.D. in 1997 and an M.D.

[1] Chen joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins University as an Assistant Professor in Biomedical Engineering and in Oncology in 1999.

In 2004, he moved to the University of Pennsylvania, where he served as the inaugural J. Peter Skirkanich Professor of Innovation in Bioengineering, founded and directed the Penn Center for Engineering Cells and Regeneration, and was a founding member of the Penn Institute for Regenerative Medicine.

[6] Chen has been a member of numerous advisory boards, committees and review groups of organizations such as the Society for BioMEMS and Biomedical Nanotechnology, the United States Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, Defense Sciences Research Council, and Faculty of 1000 Biology.

[13] Chen has demonstrated how the shape of multicellular aggregates can be used to direct patterns of bone versus fat differentiation in engineered tissues.

[15] Chen also has reported on the development of microfluidic platforms where cells line perfusable channels, including 3D printing techniques to create a framework for a synthetic vascular system that consists of a lattice of sugar, with the goal of supporting larger tissue structures such as an artificial heart or liver.