Dr. Chen received his B.Sc. degree (1970) in nuclear engineering at the National Tsing Hua University, and his M.Sc. degree (1973) and Ph.D. degree (1976) in electrical engineering and computer sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. He has joined the National Tsing Hua University since 1976 and is currently a Distinguished Chair Professor of the Department of Computer Science and a Lifelong National Chair of the Ministry of Education. He has served as Department Chairman, the founding Director of the Computer and Communication Research Center, the founding Dean of College of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, and the Vice Chancellor (in Research) of the University System of Taiwan, an alliance of four premier research universities in northern Taiwan. Dr. Chen has also served as science and technology advisor and the Director of the Science & Technology Advisory Office, Ministry of Education, Taiwan. From 2006 to 2010, he was the President of National Tsing Hua University. In March 2012, he joined the Academia Sinica as a Distinguished Research Fellow of the Institute of Information Science.

Dr. Chen has served as consultant and advisor in various levels of Taiwan government and industrial research organizations including Ministry of Economic Affairs, Institute for Information Industry, and Industrial Technology Research Institute. From 1990 for 14 years, he served as co-chairman and chairman of the technical evaluation committee of the industrial technology research grants program of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, which is recognized as one of the most successful programs in advancing industrial technologies in Taiwan. From July 2006 for 4 years, he was a science and technology advisor of the Executive Yuan of Taiwan. Starting in January 2011, he is the Program Director of the National Program for Intelligent Electronics of the National Science Council, aiming at developing advanced and innovative industrial technologies for bio-medical, green, automotive, and ICT electronics.

Dr. Chen's early research work was on software engineering. He pioneered the design of computer networks and parallel systems in early 1980s. His current research interests include intelligent sensing and applications, mobile computing, and high-speed communication networks. He has received numerous awards for his achievements in software engineering, computer networking and parallel processing, including Outstanding Research Awards of the National Science Council, Academic Award and National Chair of the Ministry of Education, and Technical Achievement Award and Taylor L. Booth Education Award of the IEEE Computer Society. Dr. Chen has served as Editor and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Information Science and Engineering of the Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica. He was the founding General Chair of the IEEE International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Systems and the General Chair of the 2000 IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems among others. He is an IEEE Fellow and a Fellow of the Chinese Society for Management of Technology.