Dr. Chen received a B.S. degree in 2003 and an M.S. degree in 2006 from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, and a Ph.D. degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2010. From 2010 to 2013, he worked as a Lead Scientist at GE Global Research Center in New York, where he enjoyed tackling diverse challenges spanning GE Energy, GE Aviation, Lockheed Martin, and electric utility companies. Subsequently, he returned to academia in 2014, joining Rutgers University’s Department of Supply Chain Management as an Assistant Professor, where he was promoted to Associate Professor in 2018 and Full Professor in 2024.

He has extensive experience working with business and public sectors to improve strategic decisions and operational efficiencies. His work has appeared in Operations Research, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Production and Operations Management, INFORMS Journal on Computing, Transportation Science, Interfaces, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, etc. Currently, he serves as an Associate Editor for several journals, such as INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics, Service Science, IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, and Journal of Simulation. He has also served as a Guest Editor for IISE Transactions, International Journal of Production Research, Flexible Services and Manufacturing Journal, etc. Additionally, he served as the Chair of the INFORMS Service Science Section from 2020 to 2023.

His current research interests include the following:

• Data analytics in service and healthcare operations
• Optimization in the supply chain, logistics, and manufacturing systems
• Methodologies in simulation and global optimization
• Operations and finance interface