He was an Instructor with the Department of Weapon Command & Control Systems, Naval Weapon School, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, during his military service from 1983 to 1985. Since August 1989, he has been with the National Tsing Hua University (NTHU), Hsinchu, Taiwan, where he is currently a Tsing Hua Distinguished Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and the Institute of Communications Engineering. He served as the Vice President for Global Affairs of NTHU from August 2016 to January 2018 and the Associate Vice President for Global Affairs from February 2014 to July 2016. He was the Chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering, NTHU, from February 2010 to July 2012 and the Director of the Institute of Communications Engineering from August 2005 to July 2008. He held visiting positions at Caltech from September 1995 to March 1996, at Bell Communications Research, Morristown, New Jersey, USA, from March 1996 to August 1996, at Osaka University, Japan, from April 2009 to September 2009, and at Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan, from September 2018 to November 2018. His research interests include digital communications, error-correcting codes, information theory, and wireless networks.
Dr. Chao was the Secretary of the IEEE Taipei Section from 1997 to 1998, the Chair of the IEEE Information Theory Society Taipei Chapter from 1999 to 2001, and the Chair of the IEEE Communications Society Taipei Chapter from 2009 to 2010. He served as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Communications Letters from 2002 to 2005. He was a General Co-Chair of the 2010 International Symposium on Information Theory and its Applications and the 2010 International Symposium on Spread Spectrum Techniques and Applications held in Taichung, Taiwan, October 2010. He received the Distinguished Teaching Awards from NTHU in 1993, 2002, and 2008, and the Y. Z. Hsu Science Paper Award in 2018.