Dr. Chen is the endowed Frederick Huetwell Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine, Director of the Center for Advanced Models for Translational Sciences and Therapeutics, and Vice-Chair for Basic and Translational Research at the Department of Cardiac Surgery at the University of Michigan Medical Center. The long-term goal of Dr. Chen’s research program in vascular medicine is elucidating the molecular basis of obesity/diabetes-induced cardiovascular diseases (CVD) and stroke, and on developing new drugs/technologies to study and treat diabetes and CVD. In the past years, Dr. Chen has made a series of significant contributions to our understanding of the role of PPARg activation as a determinant of vascular cell gene expression and cellular function and has been among the first to define the role of PPARd activation in the cardiovascular system. The discovery of the high affinity physiological PPARg ligands, nitro-fatty acids advances our understanding of endogenous PPARg modulation and provides novel therapeutic strategies for treating obesity/diabetes and CVD. Dr. Chen was the first one to clone the exendin-4 (BYETTA, the drug name for Exendin-4) gene in 1995.