Prof. Yen WEI
Chair Professor of Chemistry
Tel. +86 (010)6277-2674;
Fax +86(010)6277-1149;
Email: weiyen@tsinghua.edu.cn
Prof. Yen Wei was born in 1957 in Linchuan, China. He entered Peking University as a Chemistry freshman early 1977 and completed his undergraduate study in 1979, followed by receiving a MS degree in 1981 under the direction of late Prof. Xinde Feng. Supported by the Li Foundation USA Fellowship, he then earned his PhD from the City University of New York in 1986 under the direction of Prof. George Odian. After postdoctoral work at MIT with Prof. Gary Wnek, he joined Drexel University in 1987 as Assistant Professor, where he was promoted rapidly to DuPont Associate Professor with tenure in 1991 and full Professor in 1995. He became Herman B. Wagner Professor of Polymer and Materials Chemistry in 2004. His other appointments at Drexel included the Director of the Center for Advanced Polymers and Materials Chemistry, affiliate Professor in the School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems, and affiliate Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. He was also Chairman of the Materials Forum in the American Chemical Society (ACS) Philadelphia Section.
Dr. Wei has been interested in, and contributed to, various fields of polymer, materials, and biological sciences, including conductive polymers, hybrid sol-gel materials, mesoporous materials, nanocomposites, enzyme-immobilization, biocatalysis, biosensors, dental materials, protein folding, protein interactions, cellular and stem cell tissue engineering, drug delivery, bio-adhesives, bioconversion of biomass, and bioprinting. He has co-edited 2 books, co-authored over 541 scientific articles (>11000 citations; H-index 57) plus over 140 abstracts, and held 10 issued US patents. He also delivered more than 450 seminars and presentations worldwide.
Among the awards Dr. Wei received include the ACS Philadelphia Section Award, Drexel Research Achievement Award, Chinese Academy of Sciences Outstanding Oversea Scholar Award, National Natural Science Foundation of China Award for Outstanding Young Scientists, and DuPont Young Faculty Award. Since 1995, Dr. Wei has also been appointed Guest Professor in many institutes in China, including Peking University, Jilin University, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Nanchang University, Tongji University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, etc. In 2006, he was honored with an endowed Chang Jiang Lecture-Chair Professorship at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China, and a Visiting Chair Professorship of Nanochemistry at Chung-Yuan Christian University in Taiwan. In 2008, he was appointed Honorary Chair Professor of Materials Science at I-Lan University in Taiwan and Doctoral Supervisor at Mansoura University in Egypt. In 2009, he was named a Visiting Chair Professor of Chemical Engineering at Cheng-Kung University in Taiwan and was awarded a lifetime membership of the Israel Chemical Society. Since November 4, 2009, he has served full-time as Chair Professor of Chemistry and Director of Tsinghua Center for Frontier Polymer Research at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. In January 2012, he was appointed as an honorary Dean of the College of Printing and Packing at the Beijing Institute for Graphic Communications.
Selected Publications
1. Zhang XY, Wang SQ, Xu LX, Feng L, Ji Y, Tao L, Li SX, Wei Y, Biocompatible polydopamine fluoresecent organic nanoparticles: Facile preparation and cell imaging, Nanoscale 2012, 4, 5581-5584.
2. Zhang YL, Yang B, Zhang XY, Xu LX, Tao L, Li SX, Wei Y, A magnetic self-healing hydrogel, Chem. Comm. 2012, 48, 9305-9307.
3. Zhang XY, Wang SQ, Fu CK, Feng L, Ji Y, Tao L, Li SX, Wei Y, PolyPEGylated nanodiamond for intracellular delivery of chemotherapeutic drug, Polym. Chem. 2012, 3, 2716-2719.
4. Teng MJ, Jia XR, Yang S, Chen XF, Wei Y, Reversible tuning luminescent color and emission intensity: a dipeptide-based light-emitting material, Adv. Mater. 21012, 24(9), 1255–1261.
5. Fu CK, Tao L, Zhang Y, Li SX, Wei Y, Combining chemoenzymatic monomer transformation with ATRP: a facile “one-pot” approach to functional polymers”，Chem. Comm. 2012, 48, 9062-9064.
6. Teng MJ, Jia XR, Chen XF, Wei Y, A dipeptide-based multicolored-switching luminescent solid material: When molecular assemblies meet mechanochemical reaction, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2012, 51(26), 6398–6401.
7. Wei Y, Das S, Berke-Schlessel D, Ji HF, McDonough J, Feng L, Zhang X, Zhai WT, Cao YZ, Synthesis of a re-usable cellobiase enzyme catalyst through in-situ encapsulation in nonsurfactant templated sol-gel mesoporous silica, Top. Catal. (Invited original article), 2012, 55(16-18), 1247-1253.
8. Yang B, Zhang YL, Zhang XY, Tao L, Li SX, Wei Y, Facilely prepared inexpensive and biocompatible self-healing hydrogel: A new injectable cell therapy carrier, Polym. Chem. 2012, 3, 3235-3238.
9. Wang SQ, Fu CK, Zhang Y, Tao L, Li SX, Wei Y, one-pot cascade synthetic strategy: a smart combination of chemoenzymatic transesterification and raft polymerization, ACS Macro Letter 2012, 1 (10), 1224–1227.
10. Zhang XY, Liu MY, Zhang YL, Yang B, Ji Y, Feng L, Tao L, Li SX, Wei Y, Combining mussel-inspired chemistry and Michael addition reaction to disperse carbon nanotube, RSC Advance 2012, 2, 12153-12155.
