Professor Chen’s research has focused on the thermochemical, physical, chemical, and biochemical conversion of municipal solid waste, livestock manure, and agricultural and forestry residues into energy and value-added products, with particular emphasis on integrated approaches to waste reduction, energy recovery, and resource recycling. He has developed the “Urban-Rural Mine” and “Urban-Rural Mine Cloud” concepts, which conceptualise waste streams as renewable resource reservoirs, as well as the “Rural Metabolic Symbiotic Industry” model for integrating nutrient and energy cycles within rural production systems. His work has further introduced the “By-product-Controlled Clean Production Mechanism” and the 4F-LCA methodology, integrating energy flow, material flow, environmental flow, and economic flow within a life-cycle assessment framework for evaluating the sustainability of waste-to-resource systems. He has authored and edited seven monographs, including Energy Utilisation of Solid Waste and China’s Energy Development Roadmap to 2050, and contributed to eleven additional volumes. His contributions have been recognised through two National Science and Technology Progress Awards (Second Prize, 2008 and 2011), four Provincial/Ministerial Science and Technology Awards, and the Ho Leung Ho Lee Prize for Science and Technology Progress in 2012. Through leadership of national 863 Programme initiatives, strategic research and consulting on energy and ecological policy, and the training of clean-energy professionals, Professor Chen has contributed to the development of integrated approaches to waste-to-resource conversion and to the broader application of circular-economy principles in low-carbon energy and environmental management.