Wei Zhao (computer scientist)

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Wei Zhao (Chinese: 赵伟) is a Chinese-American computer scientist. He was the president (rector) of the University of Macau from 2008 to 2017 and is currently the chief research officer and a professor at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates.

Zhao earned a physics degree from Shaanxi Normal University in Xi’an in 1982. He then moved to the United States for graduate studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he received a Master of Science in computer science in 1983 and a PhD in 1986. From 1990 to 2007 he taught at Texas A&M University, serving as chair of the Computer Science Department from 1997 to 2001 and as senior associate vice president for research from 2001 to 2007. He was a professor and dean of science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute from 2007 to 2008.

In 2008 he became the president of the University of Macau, a position he held for nine years before resigning at the end of 2017 to join the American University of Sharjah as chief research officer in 2018. Zhao was elected an IEEE Fellow in 2001.