Wei Chen was a computational neuroscientist and pioneer in connectionist modelling who joined the Institute in 2002 from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He brought sophisticated mathematical expertise and led the development of neural network models that simulated human memory, learning, and decision-making processes. Chen's rigorous approach to bridging cognitive psychology and artificial neural systems helped establish the Institute's reputation for methodological rigor and theoretical innovation. During his tenure, he trained postdocs and graduate students in computational methods and published influential papers on emergent properties in neural networks. In 2009, he accepted a senior research position at Tsinghua University in Beijing, where he continues to direct a large computational neuroscience laboratory and collaborates internationally on artificial intelligence and cognitive modelling.