Ling-Ling Chen carried out doctoral and post-doctoral work at UConn Health, USA with Gordon G. Carmichael from 2004 to 2010. She also completed an MBA degree in Management at the UConn Business School in 2009 and was promoted to Assistant Professor in Residence at UConn in 2010. Chen moved to the Center for Excellence in Molecular Cell Science (a.k.a. Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) as an independent PI in 2011. She was selected as a HHMI International Research Scholar in 2017, and as a New Cornerstone Investigator in 2022.

Ling-Ling Chen works on RNA biology with a focus on long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) and circular RNAs. Her research has made important contributions to our understanding of the lncRNA diversity, biogenesis and function, in particular, the biogenesis of circular RNAs and their impact on innate immunity and autoimmune disease, and the snoRNA-related lncRNAs in the assembly and function of RNA-related nuclear bodies. Most recently, she developed effective circular RNA-based new modalities beneficial to disease models such as psoriasis and Alzheimer’s diseases.