Dr. Chen earned his B.Eng. in 1983 from Tsinghua University and M.Eng. in 1985 and Ph.D. in 1988 from the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). He conducted his post-doctoral research as a Research Scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH-Zurich) and worked as a Project Manager for TNO in the Netherlands. Before he joined Purdue, he was a faculty member at TU Delft and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He served as the James G. Dwyer Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University, and the Editor-in-Chief of Building and Environment. His research focused on the indoor environment, aircraft cabin environment, and energy-efficient, healthy, and sustainable building design and analysis. He has published three books and over 470 journal and conference papers, and has been invited to deliver more than 170 lectures internationally.

Dr. Chen became a reluctant celebrity in 2020, when the COVID pandemic shined a light on the indoor air quality of cruise ships, airplanes, office buildings, and restaurants. Chen had previously studied the SARS epidemic in 2004, and even built a full-sized mockup of a Boeing 767 cabin at Ray W. Herrick Laboratories to test his theories on airborne diseases in enclosed spaces. His expertise was cited more than 1,000 times in major media outlets, from BBC and CNN to Washington Post and Vox.

In recent years, he has received several technical paper and poster awards and Distinguished and Exceptional Service Awards from American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE). He is a recipient of the CAREER award from the National Science Foundation. He received the Willis J. Whitfield Award "for significant contributions to the field of contamination control through numerous published papers, studies, and reports" from the Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technology; the John Rydberg Gold Medal for "outstanding contribution to the advancement of modelling and measurement of ventilation and air distribution in buildings" from the Scandinavian Federation of Heating, Ventilating and Sanitary Engineering Associations; and Distinguished Service Award "to recognize individuals who have made substantial contributions to the field of building performance simulation over the course of their careers" from the International Building Performance Simulation Association (IBPSA). He is a fellow of ASHRAE and the International Society of Indoor Air Quality. Before he became the Editor-in-Chief of the Building and Environment journal, he served as an associate editor of the HVAC&R Research journal and was a member on the editorial boards of six other journals.

Dr. Chen has many other parallel appointments in his career, such as Honorary Professor at RMIT University in Australia; Otto Monsted Visiting Professor at the Technical University of Denmark; New Millennium Yuelu Outstanding Visiting Professor at Hunan University in China; Professorial Fellow at the Cardiff University in the UK; Research Fellow at the Chinese Academy of Sciences; Visiting/Guest/Adjunct Professor at Tokyo Polytechnic University in Japan; Helsinki University of Technology in Finland; and Tianjin University, Harbin Institute of Technology, Tsinghua University, Southeast University, Dalian University of Technology , Xi'an Jiaotong University, Soochow University, Centra South University, Hunan University and Guangzhou University in China. In addition, he has co-supervised Ph.D. students from Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands; University of Cagliari and University of Padua in Italy; and Queensland University of Technology in Australia.