Dr. Catherine Chen is a Board Certified Dermatologist with almost 20 years of experience in the East Valley, where she grew up. Her passion for teaching patients, and love for the skin as a systematic dynamically structured 3-dimensional organ above and below the surface, arose from her Rice University education as an architect. She remembered that when her father passed away during college, he said she would make a good doctor.

This inspired her to take pre-med classes at Harvard Extension School while working as a designer. CAD enabled Dr. Chen to perform surgery research at Boston Children’s Hospital and under DARPA (Defense Research Projects Agency), these eventually leading her back to Galveston, Texas for medical school.

She graduated with UTMB’s highest distinctions, the William Osler Award and membership in the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society. She completed Dermatology residency at Boston University School of Medicine where she served as Chief Resident in her final year. Dr. Chen has been published in a number of dermatology journals, and given lectures at the AAD national meeting. Specializing in skin cancer, she is proud of the number and early stage of melanomas (published in the Arizona Cancer Registry’s annual report) she is able to detect with the technique of dermoscopy. Her soul is thankful for a profound blessing of protection over her patients.

She and her husband Dr. Thomas Tsai, a family physician in Gilbert, have two sons at University of Arizona (and three dogs). They enjoy serving others in church ministries, hiking national parks, and touring cities with wondrous history. She is skilled in stained glass, quilting, portrait painting, and keeps healthy swimming, doing yoga, and reading best-selling non- fiction.

“The greatest way that a dermatologist serves another is to listen thoughtfully...then help each patient see his or her skin more clearly, through my lens of hope.”