Wang is a professor and the director of the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP), Chinese Academy of Sciences. He obtained his BSc in nuclear physics in 1984 from Nanjing University, China, and his PhD in high energy physics in 1991 from the University of Florence, Italy. He is a member of ACFA and ICFA, the author of more than 500 scientific papers, the chief editor of two books. He received prizes including: the Zhou Guangzhou Basic Science award, the Ho Leung Ho Lee Award for Scientific and Technological Progress, the National Natural science award 1st grade and the Future Science Prize from China, the NIKKEI Asia Prize for Science, Technology and Environment from Japan, the W. K.H. Panofsky Prize in Experimental Particle Physics, and the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, from the US. He is a member of CAS, and RAS, and in 2025 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (UK).

Chen is member of CAS, professor and director of Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). He is the president and fellow of China Geography Society. He obtained his PhD in 1990 at Lanzhou University. He is vice-presidents of IGU Environment Evolution Commission, China Society on Tibetan Plateau, Chinese Quaternary Science Associate. His prizes include China National Excellent Scientist in 2005; National Science Foundation for Distinguished Young Scholars in 2003; China Youth Science and Technology Award in 1996; Second award of National Natural Science in 2007 and 2018; five awards of Natural Science by Ministry of Education of China. He has published more than 690 papers in peer-reviewed journals of both English and Chinese with more than 420 papers published in SCI journals such as Nature, Science, NCC, NC, PNAS, QSR, which are cited more than 19900 times by papers of SCI journals with H index of 69.