Wenxiang Chen is a clinical chemist, currently serving as director of National Center for Clinical Laboratories, Ministry of Health, where he leads a series of national programs for clinical laboratory improvement, including external quality assessment of clinical laboratories, standardization of clinical laboratory testing, training of clinical laboratory professionals and development of clinical laboratory standards. He is curently also a research professor at Beijing Hospital Institute of Geriatrics with research areas focusing on cardiovascular disease risk factors and aging. He received a B.Sc. in pharmacy from Beijing Medical College, and M.Sc. in biochemistry and Ph.D. in clinical laboratory sciences from Peking Union Medical College. After a short period of working as a pharmacist at the Army's General Hospital, he started his clinical chemistry career at Beijing Hospital Institute of Geriatrics and National Center for Clinical Laboratories. He made much effort in developing and implementing reference systems (reference methods and materials and reference intervals) for common laboratory tests and received several government and professional awards. He has been active in the clinical laboratory community and now is the chair of National Committee on Clinical Laboratory Standards, president of Chinese Association for Clinical Laboratory Management and associate chief editor of the Chinese Journal of Laboratory Medicine.