Dr. Chien received his Ph.D. degree from the Department of Pathology, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University in 1995. Dr. Chien has been one of the faculty members at the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, College of Medicine, National Taiwan University (NTU) since 1995. He took a research leave as a visiting scientist at the Graduate School of Medicine, University of Tokyo in 1999.

His major research interests are neurobiology and stem cell biology. As an internationalized medical educator, more than 40 medical students from 18 different countries have been trained at his stem cell biology laboratory since 2004. Under Dr. Chien's supervision, 11 graduate students earned their Ph.D. degree from the institution at NTU. Most of them received faculty or clinical positions at university/medical centers. Since 2007, Dr. Chien served as the Associate Dean of College of Medicine, as well as the Deputy Director of the NTU Center of Genomic Medicine to promote the translational medicine research within NTU campus.

Currently, Dr. Chien served as the CEO of the Institute for Biotechnology and Medicine Industry (IBMI) to promote the potential collaboration between academia and bio-industry in Taiwan. Besides, IBMI just launched the international platform of "Taiwan Healthcare+", a website PORTAL for medical and biotech opportunities in Taiwan.