Dr Lei Chen is a postdoctoral research fellow, epidemiologist and endocrinologist (MBBS, MD, China). She was awarded a PhD (Monash University, 2011) in epidemiology for research on the risk assessment of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Her PhD work provided two validated tools for predicting risk of incident type 2 diabetes and of fatal cardiovascular events in the general Australian population.

Since 2018, Dr Chen has worked with Professor Dianna Magliano and Professor Jonathan Shaw on an international diabetes collaboration of large, predominantly national data sources, looking at the trends in the diabetes incidence, diabetes-related complications and mortality from different countries.