Dr Chan obtained his MEng (2001) and PhD (EPSRC Industrial CASE AWARD 2004, Supervisor: Prof Sergei G. Kazarian) at Imperial College London. He then became a research associate in Prof Kazarian's group between 2004 and 2012 including time as an EPSRC Life Science Interface (LSI) fellow between 2006 and 2009. While an EPSRC LSI fellow, Dr Chan spent 1 year (2007) in Rutgers University, Newark, USA, with Prof Richard Mendelsohn's group as a visiting researcher.

In 2012 and 2018, Dr Chan respectively acquired the Lectureship and Senior Lectureship in Pharmaceutical Molecular Spectroscopy in the Institute of Pharmaceutical Science at King’s College London. In 2014, he joined as a committee member, and as the Event Secretary in 2019, in the Joint Pharmaceutical and Analysis Group (JPAG). He is an editorial board member of the journal Scientific Reports. Dr Chan has published over 70 peer-reviewed research articles and book chapters primarily in the development of novel applications of Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy for testing pharmaceutical formulations and biological systems. One of his main research interests is focused on the application of FTIR spectroscopy and imaging to study live cells-drug interactions.

Dr Chan has been awarded the Weinberg Prize in 2004 (Imperial College London, Department of Chemical Engineering) for his PhD and the Hounsfield poster prize in 2009 (Imperial College London) for his bio-spectroscopic research. He currently has an h-index of 31 according to the Web Of Knowledge.