After graduating from medical school, Dr. Chen pursued a research fellowship at the Doheny Eye Institute/University of Southern California. She then completed a one-year internal medicine internship at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, NY. After the internship, Dr. Chen continued her research fellowship at the Center for Sight at Georgetown School of Medicine in Washington, DC. Her post-graduate training continued with a three-year ophthalmology residency at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, Texas.

Dr. Chen has multiple publications in the Ophthalmic Society and has received several awards, including "Resident of the Year" from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (2000) and the "Gordon Award" from the Alamo City Ophthalmology Clinical Conference (1999). She has also been active in community service in Hawaii since she started to practice here. The activity she considers most honorable is the Senior Program that helps elderly citizens who don't have insurance.

Dr. Chen is fluent in English, Chinese, Portuguese and Spanish, speaks some Japanese, and is learning Illocano.