“Students are the center of education. A good teacher is a guide and a motivator, a lighthouse at night which guides the boats of all the students to the shore of knowledge.”
Wei Wei
Associate ProfessorChemistry
Wei Wei is Associate Professor of Chemistry at Goucher College in Baltimore, MD. He received his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Wuhan University. After that he moved to the U.S. and completed his Ph.D study in Texas A&M University, with Dr. Simon W. North. His graduate research focused on using lasers and other modern experimental physics techniques to understand the motion, energy and dynamics of atoms and molecules during chemical reactions.
Following graduate school, Wei transitioned to undergraduate teaching and started working on laser related research in primarily undergraduate institutions. He was visiting Assistant Professor at Alma College, MI. After that he worked as Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Franklin College, IN for several years and was promoted to Associate Professor. He also served as the Department Chair of Chemistry and Physics during 2024-2025.
He joined Goucher College in 2025 with great excitement. He is teaching Principles of Chemistry I & II with Labs, and upper-level Physical Chemistry related courses. He also plans to develop courses related to History of Science and Food Chemistry.
Wei has several secondary interests. He loves history and has kept auditing history courses ever since college time. He also loves cooking. He cooks authentic Chinese food and learns about cooking world dishes. He has taught a course names “Understanding China via Food and Culture”.
Research, Scholarship, Creative Work in Progress
We will be developing a laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy system in Wei’s lab with students and hope to explore its application in environmental chemistry, food forensics, and in archeology.
Publications
E. Sakkoula, G. Sharma, X. Wang, S. W. North, D. H. Parker and W. Wei. “Dynamics and Vector Correlations of Vacuum Ultraviolet (VUV) Photodissociation of CO2 at 155nm” Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 24, 2592 (2022).
M. L. Warter, C. E. Gunthardt, W. Wei, G. C. McBane, and S. W. North. “Nascent O2 (a 1Δg, v = 0, 1) rotational distributions from the photodissociation of jet-cooled O3 in the Hartley band” J. Chem. Phys. 149, 134309 (2018)
W. Wei, C. J. Wallace, M. P. Grubb and S. W. North. “A Method of Extracting Speed-dependent Vector Correlations from 2+1 REMPI Ion Images” J. Chem. Phys. 147, 013947 (2017) (Special Topic)
W. Wei, C. J. Wallace, G. C. McBane, and S. W. North. “Photodissociation Dynamics of OCS Near 214 nm Using Ion Imaging”, J. Chem. Phys. 145, 024310 (2016)
External Awards, Honors, Grants
Indiana Academy of Science Senior Research Grant. November 2024-August 2025
Rinker Faculty Excellence Grant (Franklin College internal grant). Summer 2023 Designated alumni donation to research fund. 2019
Honorable mention (4th place) of ACS Chair’s Poster Presentation Award, ACS Indiana branch. May 2019
Invited Talks
Invited talk at University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, July (2023)
Oral presentation at 76th Annual International Symposium on Molecular Spectroscopy, Champaign, IL, June (2023) Oral presentation at American Chemical Society National Meeting, Chicago, IL, August (2022)