His research interests focus on sensors, actuators and their readout circuitry. Dr. Chao has published more than 350 peer-reviewed papers (books, journal papers, conferences, reports) and 38 patents.

Dr. Chao was the recipient of the 1999 Arch T. Colwell Merit Award from Society of Automotive Engineering, Detroit, USA; the 2004 Long-Wen Tsai Best Paper Award from National Society of Machine Theory and Mechanism, Taiwan; the 2005 Best Paper Award from National Society of Engineers, Taiwan; the 2007 Acer LongTerm Award; the 2009 Best Paper Award from the Symposium on Nano-Device Technology; the 2010/2014 Best Paper Award from the Annual ASME Conference on Information Storage and Processing Systems (ISPS); the second most downloaded paper in IEEE Sensors Journal in 2011; the Best Poster Paper award of IDMC 2015; the prestigious Outstanding Research Award from National Association of Automatic Control in Taiwan in 2015; the prestigious National Innovation Award of Taiwan government 2016; The 2017 Best Industrial Project Award by Ministry of Science and technology, Taiwan government; The 2017 Presidential Outstanding Professor of Engineering in Nation (Taiwan) (awarded by the president of the nation in the Presidential Hall of Taiwan, ROC); Two 2017 Future Technology Awards (Taiwan Oscar Invention Award) from Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), Taiwan Government; The 2018 Outstanding Professor of Electrical Engineering in Nation (Taiwan), National Association of Electrical Engineering, Taiwan; The second National Innovation Award of Taiwan Government in 2018; The Laureate of the MOST Outstanding Researcher Award, Ministry of Science and technology, Taiwan in 2019 and 2023, equivalent to the NSF National Medal of Science in USA, the sole awardee in the area of Automation in the entire nation; The Technical Achievement Award, Sensors Council, IEEE, USA, 2019; The Distinguished Institutional Award, American Society of Mechanical Engineering (ASME), USA in 2019. The Best Paper Awards of the ASME ISPS conferences 2019 and 2020; The 2021 MOST Outstanding Technology Transfer Award, Ministry of Science and technology, Taiwan Government.