Xi Chen, PhD, is an associate professor of health policy and economics at Yale University. His research leverages big data in health from multiple continents, integrates causal inference, machine learning and deep learning to evaluate policies on population aging, life course health, and global health systems. He is an Editor at the Journal of Population Economics, a consultant at the United Nations, the World Bank, Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), Research Fellow at the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), former President of the China Health Policy and Management Society, U.S. National Institutes of Health’s Butler-Williams Scholar and Claude D. Pepper Scholar, research affiliate of Cornell Institute on Health Economics, cluster lead at the Global Labor Organization, editorial board member at China CDC Weekly, delegate of US–China Healthcare Dialogue (Track II), and advisory committee member of the International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU) Ageing, Longevity and Health (ALH) group. His studies have appeared in major science, economics, and medical journals, such as The Lancet, Nature Aging, PNAS, JAMA, BMJ, JAERE, JEEM, SSM, AJAE and JEoA, recognized through numerous awards such as the Kuznets Prize and George F. Warren Award, and widely covered in global media. He is a commentator at BBC, Bloomberg, CNN, and writes opinion pieces for NYT. Professor Chen has been ranked the world's top 2% most-cited scientists by Stanford University and Elsevier, and top 1% of economists worldwide by RePEc. He obtained a PhD in Applied Economics from Cornell University.Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA) (2011), the George Warren Award (2012), the Outstanding Ph.D. Dissertation Award from the AAEA (2013), the MacMillan Faculty Research Award (2013, 2017), USDA-ERS (2008), James Tobin Summer Research Award (2014), the Kempf Award (2017-2018), awards from the National Institute of Health (NIH), and the U.S. PEPPER Center Scholar Award (2016). He is a Butler-Williams Scholar (2019). His timely and rigorous economic evaluations on the COVID-19 pandemic won the Kuznets Prize (2020).

His research projects funded by public and private funding sources has resulted in 80+ peer-reviewed publications, such as PNAS, LANCET, PLoS Medicine, LANCET Public Health, JEEM, JoPE, EHP, SSM, JoEA, and AJAE. These studies have been widely covered 1,000+ times in popular media worldwide, such as BBC, CNN, CBS, WSJ, NYT, The Guardian, Financial Times, The Economist, The Washington Post, The Macmillan Report, The Times of London, NPR, Time Magazine, Fortune, Slate, Forbes, Bloomberg, CNBC, Al Jazeera, World Economic Forum, Science Magazine, ABC, EuroNews, Foreign Policy, FOX News, New Scientist, National Geography, Foreign Affairs, RT, Xinhua News Agency, Global Times, and People's Daily. He is a commentator at BBC, CNN, EuroNews, CCTV, CGTN.

Professor Chen has supervised more than 30 postdoctoral fellows, PhD students and Yale College students who have won a number of outstanding paper awards. Professor Chen has taught quantitative methods in health economics and health services research, as well as U.S.-China Health Systems at Yale. He obtained a Ph.D. in Applied Economics from Cornell University.