Dr. Feng Chen received his Ph.D in Plant Biology from University of California, Davis. He did postdoc training at the University of Michigan. Dr. Chen joined the Plant Sciences faculty in September 2004. Research in the Chen group is directed towards understanding plant secondary metabolism. Despite the importance of secondary metabolites for the plant as well as for human health, plant secondary metabolism in general remains poorly characterized. The research program in the Chen group employs an integrated functional genomic approach, which combines bioinformatic analysis, metabolic profiling, expression profiling, and large-scale in vitro biochemical assays, to systemically discover novel genes in plant secondary metabolism using rice and Arabidopsis as main model species. This study is expected to yield important results that will open new avenues to understanding the metabolism, physiology and evolution of plants, and also provide knowledge and tools for plant metabolic engineering.