Undergraduate
Prospective Students:
Meet Your Department Head —Dr. Timothy Wei
Dr. Wei joined Rensselaer in 2006 after almost 20 years at Rutgers.
His goal? To continue building a cohesive department; using faculty and staff talents to solve multidisciplinary problems at all levels, from instruction to research.
His research? Fluid Dynamics.
His video based tools are helping; vascular and neurosurgeons solve fluid problems in the human body and U.S. Olympic swimmers improve
their techniques.
HE MAY BE WEARING THE HAT OF AN academic administrator, but Timothy Wei still sounds an awful lot like an engineer.
The new head of the Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering Department (MANE) hopes to “optimize” course requirements and “streamline” teaching loads, all while having “zero negative impact” on the quality of instruction. “We need to look at our curriculum to make sure we are teaching efficiently, focusing on what students need to know in the 21st century, and making sure we deliver that in an effective way,” he says, choosing his words with the precision of (you guessed it) an engineer.
| “We need to look at our curriculum to make sure we are teaching efficiently, focusing on what students need to know in the 21st century, and making sure we deliver that in an effective way,” |
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Wei came to Rensselaer in January 2006 after almost 20 years at Rutgers. In MANE he sees a department with all the right pieces; his job is to provide leadership and get everyone on the same page. The goal: a cohesive community that uses its many talents to solve multidisciplinary problems at all levels, from instruction through research. “We are inherently multidisciplinary, with the natural sciences, chemistry, physics, biology, engineering, mathematics, and even the arts, all pulled together on very complex problems,” he says.
Wei hopes to create broad umbrella thrust areas under which large numbers of researchers can approach these problems—ideally in the form of research centers led by faculty from each of the MANE disciplines. “If you go back to the major initiative areas identified in THE RENSSELAER PLAN, those are very natural for us,” he says. “We should be a microcosm of what the Institute looks like.”
While some might worry that this emphasis on research will detract from the top-notch engineering education MANE is known for, Wei sees no such trade-off. “In my experience, the best teachers are also great researchers,” he says. “They are thinking big thoughts, asking big questions. Those are the kind of people that bring excitement and passion for what they do to the students.” But, he adds, it is important to remember that MANE is an engineering department. Basic science is critical but engineers should be looking at the problems driving society.
Ideally, research within MANE should run the spectrum from basic to applied, with everything in between, Wei says. Faculty with expertise in fundamental nuclear, chemical, and physical sciences should form the foundation. But the department should also have researchers looking at tools and methodologies, as well as people at the very applied end.
Wei’s career exemplifies this spectrum. His training is in the fundamental physics of fluid flows. “I view that as my intellectual wheelhouse,” he says. “But I am also a problem solver. I like to take this fundamental science knowledge and cross over to solving realworld problems.”
Much of his “bread-and-butter” funding has come from basic research projects for the U.S. Navy, but lately he has expanded into bio-related research—using video-based techniques to measure fluid flows. He is working with a vascular surgeon to study the growth of endothelial cells, and with a neurosurgeon to understand the mechanism behind hydrocephalus, or excess fluid in the brain.
But these days Wei’s favorite project is about as applied as it gets. His video-based tools are helping U.S. Olympic swimmers improve their techniques. He has already found a way to improve the efficiency of the breast-stroke kick, but he is keeping the details quiet to give the team an advantage in the run-up to the 2008 Olympic Games. “I get a real kick out of this stuff,” he deadpans.
originally published in the Fall 2006 Rensselaer Magazine (pdf, 3.5 MB)
Jonsson Engineering Center Rm. 2049
110 8th Street
Troy, New York 12180
Email: mane@rpi.edu | Phone: (518) 276-6351 | Fax: (518) 276-6025
