Yu-Chun Chien received her Doctor of Musical Arts and Master of Music degrees from Manhattan School of Music in New York, and her Bachelor of Music degree from Taipei National University of the Arts in Taiwan. Some of her most influential teachers have been Reiko Füting, Susan Botti and Chung-Kun Hung.

Yu-Chun Chien has received numerous prizes, awards, scholarships, grants and commissions, including the Second Prize, the Orchestra's Choice and the Audience's Choice in the Orchestra Composition Competitions held by the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra; the Distinction Awards in the Instrumental Solo/Duet Composition Competition and Choral Composition Competition organized by the National Chiang Kai-Shek Cultural Center; the Representative Piece of Taiwan in the 67th International Rostrum of Composers; the Representative Piece of Taiwan in the 29th Asian Composers League Conference and Festival; the “Call for Score” Commission Award from the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra; the Scholarship for Overseas Study from the Ministry of Education in Taiwan; the Regular Grant and Exchange Grant from the National Culture and Arts Foundation; and Nina Elizabeth Nilssen Scholarship Fund.

Yu-Chun Chien's compositions and arrangements have been performed and published in Taiwan, the United States, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Finland, and the Netherlands. She has appeared at festivals and residencies such as June in Buffalo, Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, impuls International Ensembles and Composers Academy for Contemporary Music, Musiikin aika, ilSUONO Contemporary Music Week, Asian Composers League Conference and Festival, Etchings Festival, Loretto Project, Crosstown Arts, and ICEBERG New Music: Composer's Collective. She has collaborated with some of the world's prestigious orchestras, ensembles and musicians, including the Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des SWR, the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Signal, loadbang, Mivos quartet, Longleash piano trio, Contemporaneous ensemble, ECCE ensemble, Blueshift Ensemble, Ensemble Suono Giallo, Uunsinta ensemble, Taipei Chamber Singers, David Gilbert, Brad Lubman, Pablo Rus Broseta, Fusao Kajima, Georges-Emmanuel Schneider, William Lang, Adrián Blanco, Jenny Lin, Giacomo Piermatti and many others. She has participated in master classes with Mark Andre, Franck Bedrossian, Pierluigi Billone, Susan Botti, Eivind Buene, Raphael Cendo, David Dzubay, David Felder, Brian Ferneyhough, Beat Furrer, Henrik Hellstenius, Joel Hoffman, Klaus Lang, Josh Levine, Fabien Lévy, Yen Maresz, Jeffrey Mumford, Isabel Mundry, Kaija Saariaho, Georgia Spiropoulos, Steven Stucky, among others. As a composer, Yu-Chun constantly searches for new means of expression, which can be transformed in personal and intimate ways.

Yu-Chun Chien is currently Visiting Assistant Professor at West Virginia University. Previously, she was appointed coordinator of aural skills and coordinator of theory tutoring program at Manhattan School of Music, where she served as a teaching fellow in the College theory department and a faculty member in the Precollege Division.