James Wei was born in China in 1930, when every student was urged to study engineering or medicine. He came to the US in 1949 and studied chemical engineering at Georgia Tech and MIT, but his minor was in Fine Arts at Harvard. He worked in Mobil Oil for many years in research, but was sent to Harvard Business School and to corporate planning. After fifteen years in industry, he changed direction to become a professor at the University of Delaware. He served as Department Head of Chemical Engineering at MIT 1978-1988, and as Dean of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Princeton University 1991-2002. He received numerous awards for research and teaching from professional societies, and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He likes to paint and to play the piano, and to work on projects with his eight grand children.