01 · Introduction
Academic journey
Wei Chen arrived in Canada as a graduate student in 1986 and has spent his career on the structural response of buildings to loading conditions outside the design envelope — earthquakes larger than the code anticipates, wind events that fall outside the historical record.
He served eight years as Dean of Engineering, a period he describes without enthusiasm and during which he nonetheless pushed through a curriculum reform requiring all engineering undergraduates to complete coursework in uncertainty and failure analysis. The reform survived his departure, which he regards as its principal validation.
He holds a higher doctorate awarded on the basis of his published work, and continues to supervise doctoral students at seventy-one.
