Zhongping Chen is a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of California Irvine Henry Samueli School of Engineering, USA. He also serves as the director of the Functional OCT Laboratory at UCI Beckman Laser Institute & Medical Clinic. Chen specializes in optical coherence tomography, biomedical imaging, biophotonics, bioMEMS, and optical Doppler tomography. Chen received his BS degree from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and his MS and PhD degrees from Cornell University.

Chen is recognized for his groundbreaking contributions to the development of Doppler optical coherence tomography (D-OCT) and optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA). The phase-resolved D-OCT and Doppler variance imaging developed by Chen’s group have been widely used not only as powerful research tools for imaging and quantifying vascular changes in neuroscience and cancer research but also in clinical applications such as ophthalmology.

Chen’s research integrates fundamental research, technological development, biomedical studies, and clinical applications. He has made significant impacts in translating numerous optical imaging technologies to clinical applications. These include imaging and diagnosis of laryngeal cancer and neonatal subglottic stenosis, airway injury and lung cancer, oral cancers, obstructive sleep apnea, ocular diseases, cardiovascular diseases, and brain aneurysms. Chen has authored more than 300 peer-reviewed papers and review articles and holds over 25 patents in the fields of biomaterials, biosensors, and biomedical imaging.

Chen is a Fellow of Optica, the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, and SPIE. In 2024, he was awarded Optica’s Michael S. Feld Biophotonics Award, “For pioneering research, development, and clinical translation of Doppler optical coherence tomography (OCT), OCT angiography, OCT elastography, and multimodality intravascular imaging.”