Dr. Chen’s research concentrates on developing machine learning methods, especially deep learning models (DLMs) (e.g., Deep Neural Networks, Boltzmann Machine, and topic modeling), to study cancer cell signaling systems, cell-cell communication in tumor microenvironment (TME), heterogeneity in diseases, disease mechanisms and cancer pharmacogenomics. Dr. Chen uses the concise representation learned from the DLM with the causal inference to guide the identification of molecular signatures/biomarkers and predicts the clinical outcomes including drug sensitivity and patient survival. Based on Dr. Chen’s strong research background in bioinformatics, biomedical informatics, biology and machine learning, she successfully develops comprehensive AI models that precisely represent the state of signaling systems in cancer cells and use such information to improve the tumor-specific precision medicine (precision oncology).