Dr. Chen has devoted his efforts to research into coastal and marine hydrodynamics, with emphasis on numerical modelling of free surface waves including wave breaking, wave overtopping, wave-wave and wave-structure interactions. He develops computational fluid dynamic based numerical solvers for fluid-structure interaction (FSI) analysis for flexible marine structures with applications in offshore energy and aquaculture devices, stochastic analysis of wave-structure and wave-wave interactions and analysis of wave-overtopping impinging on human body and residential structures.