Dr. Alex Chen is the director of VA Vascular Surgery Research, VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System, at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. He is also professor of surgery. Prior to this he was an assistant professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology at Michigan State University College of Medicine. Dr. Chen got his medical degree from Hunan Medical University in China. From there he moved to Southern Illinois University, where he earned his MS and PhD in Pharmacology. He then became a NIH Postdoctoral Fellow at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where he focused on anesthesiology. Dr. Chen is the editor-in-chief of Frontiers in Integrative and Regenerative Pharmacology, and he is on the editorial board of several journals, including Open Hypertension Journal, American Journal of Physiology (Heart & Circ Physiology), and Advances in Pharmacological Sciences.

Dr. Chen's research focuses on vascular biology and disease, with an ultimate goal of translating mechanistic insights gained for new therapeutic modalities including cell therapies.