The circumgalactic medium resides in the interface between star-forming regions and intergalactic space contains the majority of baryonic mass as well as the critical record of gas circulation in and out of galaxies.
Chen, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Chicago, has been leading efforts to decipher how the growth and evolution of galaxies over cosmic time are connected and/or regulated by the physical properties of the circumgalactic gas.
[1] Chen studied physics at National Taiwan University, earning a bachelor's degree in 1992 and a master's in 1994.
[2] After postdoctoral research at the Carnegie Observatories from 1999 to 2002, and as a Hubble Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2002 to 2005, Chen became an assistant professor of astronomy at the University of Chicago in 2005.
[2] The American Astronomical Society named Chen to their 2022 class of AAS Fellows, "for fundamental work using quasar absorption-line observations to study the halo gas content of galaxies".