Biografie (Wei Chen)

Wei Chen is the Wilson-Cook Chair Professor in at Northwestern University. She is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, with courtesy appointment in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, and is a faculty fellow of the Segal Design Institute. She is also the Director of the interdisciplinary doctoral cluster in Predictive Science and Engineering Design (PSED) at Northwestern. Wei Chen received her PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1995, her M.S. from the University of Houston in 1992, and her B.S. from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China in 1988. Before joining Northwestern University in 2003, she served at Clemson University (1995-98) and the University of Illinois at Chicago (1998-2003). Directing the Integrated DEsign Automation Laboratory (IDEAL), her current research involves issues such as consumer choice modeling and enterprise-driven Decision-Based Design, simulation-based design under uncertainty, model validation, stochastic multiscale analysis and design, robust shape and topology optimization, and multidisciplinary optimization. To promote Decision-Based Design as a new design paradigm that employs the classical decision theory and rigorous mathematical principles to preference modeling and design decision-making, during 1996 to 2004, Chen co-organized the National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored Open Workshop on Decision-Based Design, a series of 18 face-to-face meetings and website workshops . Chen was the recipient of the 1996 NSF Faculty Early Career Award and the 1998 American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Pi Tau Sigma Gold Medal achievement award. She was also the recipient of the 2005 Intelligent Optimal Design Prize and the 2006 SAE Ralph R. Teetor Educational award. Chen is a Fellow of American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and an Associate Fellow of American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). She is an elected member of the ASME Design Engineering Division Executive Committee and an elected Advisory Board member of the Design Society. Author of the book Decision Making in Engineering Design (co-edited with Lewis, K. and Schmidt, L.) and over 190 technical papers, Chen is an Associate Editor of the ASME Journal of Mechanical Design and serves as the review editor of Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization. In the past, she was an Associate Editor of the Journal of Engineering Optimization (07-09).