Prof. Chen received her doctoral degree from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She is the associate editor of Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease and joint-appointed Faculty of Master Program of Statistics. In 2016, her laboratory completed the first genome-wide association study (GWAS) of Alzheimer’s disease in older adults of Chinese ethnicity.
As dementia research has shifted toward preclinical prevention and prediction, Prof. Chen, in collaboration with Dr. Jen-Hau Chen, Director of the Department of Geriatrics at National Taiwan University Hospital Yunlin Branch, established the Taiwan Initiative for Geriatric Epidemiological Research (TIGER), a prospective cohort study, in 2011 (project site). To date, the study has enrolled a total of 1,234 participants aged 65 and older. Follow-up assessments have been conducted every two to three years. The cohort focuses on the preclinical stage of dementia in older adults, with the goal of enabling early prevention and promoting healthy aging. The cohort profile was published in 2024 (link). It is one of the few long-term cohort studies in Taiwan, comprising five waves of follow-up in addition to baseline data, with ongoing data collection underway.
TIGER cohort has collected data on over 1,000 interdisciplinary variables, including global and domain-specific cognitive function, depression, sarcopenia, frailty, environmental exposures (e.g., air pollutants), nutrition, retinal and brain imaging, dental health, olfactory function, as well as biomarkers, including inflammatory and nutritional markers and genotyping data. We employed a meticulous epidemiological design and utilized advanced statistical tools to comprehensively analyze this multifaceted data. Findings from the TIGER cohort have been published in leading international journals in neuroscience, geriatric medicine, dentistry, environmental health, and nutrition (publication list). Approximately 40% of TIGER study’s findings are considered novel at the global level. The lab has joined several international research consortia and maintains close collaborations with teams in the United States and Australia.
Prof. Chen’s lab is committed to maintaining this cohort as a long-term resource to advance research on dementia, cognitive decline, and geriatric epidemiology in Taiwan.