Wei Chen is a Lead Researcher in the Theory group of Microsoft Research Asia and an Adjunct Professor of Tsinghua University. His main research interests include theory of distributed computing, fault tolerance, and algorithmic aspects of game theory and social networks. He has a number of papers published in leading computer science journals and conferences. He has served as PC member for technical conferences in distributed computing, fault tolerance and dependability, and theoretical computer science. He is the winner of 2000 William C. Carter Award at 2000 IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN), because of the paper "On the quality of service of failure detectors" based on his Ph.D. dissertation.

Wei Chen teaches a Distributed Computing course in Tsinghua University to third-year undergraduate students in the Tsinghua-Microsoft Special Pilot CS Class. He also coordinates the management of this special class with the Institute of Theoretical Computer Science (ITCS), Tsinghua Unversity headed by Andrew Yao, and co-supervises graduate students of ITCS.

Wei Chen obtained his bachelor and master degrees from the Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, and his Ph.D degree from the Department of Computer Science, Cornell University.

Wei Chen was the captain of Tsinghua University Varsity soccer team, which won Beijing Inter-collegiate Championship twice during his tenure. He was also the captain of the "Tsinghua Veterans" soccer team in North America, which won the championship title of the Annual North America Chinese Soccer Tournament twice.