Kellen Chen, PhD

Kellen Chen, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Department of Surgery and Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Arizona, College of Medicine Tucson. Dr. Chen completed his postdoctoral research fellowship at Stanford University. He also previously received his PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Virginia and earned his B.S. in Bioengineering from the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Chen co-directs his research lab with the Department of Surgery Chair, Geoffrey Gurtner, MD, FACS. Together, they are currently studying therapies to improve outcomes after injury, skin grafting, chronic wound development, biomedical device implantation, liver cirrhosis, cancer development, and more. Among these many research avenues, Dr. Chen is particularly interested in the molecular and cellular drivers of fibrosis and regeneration across all organ systems. He is also currently working on obtaining FDA approval for a clinical trial to study pharmacological inhibition of mechanical signaling to accelerate healing of deep dermal injury.

Dr. Chen has co-authored over 55 peer-reviewed publications and three book chapters, including first author publications in journals such as the Science Translational Medicine, Nature Communications, PNAS, and Nature Biomedical Engineering. He has received a variety of awards, including the First Place Young Investigator's Award from the Wound Healing Society; Bernard G. Sarnat MD Excellence in Grant Writing Award from the Plastic Surgery Foundation, Career Development Award from the University of Arizona Health Sciences, and Dean Louis J. Kettel Award for exemplary student research mentoring from the Medical Student Research Program. Dr. Chen is a member of the Wound Healing Society, Diabetic Foot Consortium, Biomedical Engineering Society, and Sigma Xi Scientific Research Honor Society.

In addition, Dr. Chen is also the co-director of the University of Arizona Cancer Center (UACC) Biospecimen Core. To request cancer and healthy tissue specimens for research, please see here for more information.