Weidong Chen obtained his B.S. in Radio-Physics from the department of Electronics of SUN YAT-SEN University (Guangzhou, China), his M.S. and PhD degree from University of Sciences & Technologies of Lille (USTL) in France. He has been on the faculty at University of the Littoral Opal Coast (France) in 1993 as Lecturer and became full Professor of Optics in 2003. He is adjunct faculty of Rice University (USA) and invited professor of Anhui Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics (Chinese Academy of Sciences, China).
His current research interests include : (1) Developments of photonic instrumentation for applied spectroscopy; (2) Optical sensing and metrology of atmospheric species : trace gases (concentration, isotope ratios, vertical concentration profile) and aerosols (optical properties); (3) Optical parametric laser source generation by frequency conversion. He has authored/co- authored more than 160 peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals, conference proceedings and books. he has over 220 conference contributions (including invited conferences oral and poster presentations) and seminars. He has been rewarded for the developments of a Fourier transform THz spectrometer (1986 Guangdong Province Prize for Scientific and Technical Progress, China) and an infrared laser spectrometer based on difference-frequency generation (nomination for the 1999 Sir Harold Thompson Memorial Award, USA).
Dr. Chen served as CO-EDITOR for the LACSEA 2016 feature issue in Applied Optics (OSA), CO-GUEST-EDITOR for the Special Issue of Sensors on « Optical Sensing and Imaging from UV to THz Range » (2018), and CO-EDITOR for a book entitled “Advanced Spectroscopic Measurement Techniques for Atmospheric Science” with Elsevier (ongoing).
His group at ULCO is working on development of photonic instruments from the UV to the mid- IR for optical metrology of key atmospheric species (trace gases, aerosols) with support from European (INTERREG) and French national programs (ANR, ACI, CNRS), as well as from regional programs (IRENI, CLIMIBIO).