Banglin Chen was born in Zhejiang, China. He is a Fellow of American of Association for the Advancement of Science(AAAS), a Fellow of Japan Society for the Prommotion of Science(JSPS), a Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) and a Foreign Fellow of European Academy of Sciences. He is an editorial board member of ChemistrySelect, Chinese Chemical Letters, and Materials Today Chemistry and EnergyChem.

In 2011, Dr. Chen was ranked as one of the top 100 chemists over the past decade based on citation impact factor. In 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 he was chosen as a highly cited researcher. He was spotlighted in The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds 2014-2018 by Thomson Reuters, and is on the 2016 List of Most Cited Researchers in Materials Science and Engineering by Elsevier Scopus Data. In November 2018, he received the Humboldt Prize (Humboldt Research Award).