Dr. Chen graduated with a BS in Pharmacy from Nanjing College of Pharmacy and a MS in Pharmacology from China Pharmaceutical University. He received his PhD in Biochemical Pharmacology from the State University of New York at Buffalo where he studied activation mechanisms of protein kinase C. He then pursued research on prion disease at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, and co-founded the National Prion Disease Pathology Surveillance Center serving first as the head of its CSF diagnostic laboratory and then the associate director of the center. Dr. Chen is currently Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology, Case Western Reserve University. His research interests have been the molecular mechanisms underlying the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative disorders including prion disease and Parkinson’s disease. He has over 70 scientific publications focusing on the characterization of disease-associated alterations in conformation, structure and function of key proteins implicated in neurological diseases.