Dr. Wen Chen earned her Ph.D. in Genetics and Behavioral Biology from the California Institute of Technology in 2000. Under the mentorship of Dr. Paul Sternberg, her doctoral research explored the G-protein signaling pathway in C. elegans. Since then, Dr. Chen has served as a scientific staff member at Caltech and was among the founding members of the WormBase project—now part of the Alliance of Genome Resources.

Over her 25-year tenure with WormBase, Dr. Chen has been instrumental in developing the infrastructure that supports scientific data collection, curation, and dissemination. As a scientific curator, she leads the annotation of high-throughput expression datasets, including single-cell RNA sequencing and proteomics data. As a software engineer, she has developed and maintained key tools such as WormBase SPELL, SimpleMine, and the Expression Dataset Locator. In her role as scientific outreach coordinator, she organizes the WormBase Webinar Series and regularly presents at scientific conferences and university seminars. These experiences have allowed her to engage deeply with a wide range of research disciplines and emerging technologies.

Dr. Chen’s research interests also extend to biopolicy, particularly the transgenerational effects of genetically engineered microbiomes. She actively participates in discussion forums hosted by Caltech’s Linde Center for Science, Society, and Policy (LCSSP).

Beyond her scientific career, Dr. Chen is a public speaker on topics related to Chinese culture, history, and human rights. She also serves on the board of Caltech Women in Biology and Biological Engineering (WiBBE).