His research interests are in optical communications, silicon photonics, and microwave photonics, as well as engineering education and teaching pedagogy.,Dr. Chen was the Technical Program Chair of the 2019 IEEE International Topical Meeting on Microwave Photonics and has served on the Technical Program Committees for a number of international conferences, including the IEEE Photonics Conference, the Conference on Optical Fiber Communications, the Opto-Electronics and Communications Conference, and the Asia Communications and Photonics Conference. He is the Principal Guest Editor of the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Quantum Electronics Issue on Optical Signal Processing (to be published in 2021). He is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America.