He has carried out cooperative research in Washington University (St. Louis), Georgia Institute of Technology, and Kyoto University. Chen is mainly engaged in the teaching and research of wood physics, bio-based nanomaterials, and biomass composites. He presided over the Youth Science Fund Project of the National Natural Science Foundation, the Special Funded Project of China Postdoctoral Science Foundation, and many other projects. Over the years Chen has been focused on the functionalization of wood nanocellulose and other related areas. He has published more than 20 SCI papers, of which 4 articles were selected as cover articles and 1 article was ESI highly cited paper. He obtained 4 patents and won the first prize for Liang Xi Young Scholar Award.