Wei Chen
- B.S. Chemistry, Jilin University, 1996 – 2000
- M.S. Inorganic Chemistry, Jilin University, 2000 – 2003. Advisor: Prof. Jie-Sheng Chen
- Ph.D. Polymer Science and Engineering, University of Massachusetts - Amherst, 2005 – 2010. Advisor: Prof. Thomas P. Russell
- Argonne Director’s Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Nanoscale Materials, Argonne National Laboratory, 2010-2012. Advisor: Dr. Seth B. Darling
Wei Chen is a research scientist in the Materials Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory and an affiliate of the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering. He received his B.S. and M.S. in Chemistry from Jilin University and his Ph.D. in Polymer Science and Engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2010, working with Prof. Thomas P. Russell on directed self-assembly of block copolymer thin films. He completed an Argonne Director’s Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Center for Nanoscale Materials under Dr. Seth B. Darling before joining the Materials Science Division as a staff scientist in 2012.
His current research centers on the non-equilibrium physics of dense soft matter. Using simultaneous small-angle X-ray scattering, X-ray photon correlation spectroscopy, and rheometry (in situ Rheo-SAXS-XPCS) at the Advanced Photon Source, his group tracks how nanostructure evolves under controlled flow in colloidal suspensions, vitrimer nanocomposites, and battery electrode slurries. Alongside experiment, his group develops scientific machine-learning frameworks — including universal differential equations and physics-informed neural networks — to extract constitutive models and predict rheological transitions from dynamic scattering data.