Wei You was born in a small village outside of Chuzhou in Anhui Province of China and grew up in Hefei, the provincial capital of Anhui. After receiving a B.S. degree in Polymer Chemistry from University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in 1999, Wei decided to pursue graduate work in the United Stated and attended the graduate program of chemistry at the University of Chicago.

After five years of work and life in the ‘Windy City”, he obtained his Ph.D. in 2004 under the guidance of Professor Luping Yu. He then moved west and finished his postdoctoral training at Stanford University in 2006 with Professor Zhenan Bao. In July 2006, Dr. You joined the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as an Assistant Professor in Chemistry. He was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor in 2012 and then Full Professor in 2017.

Together with students and collaborators, he has published over 100 papers in premier journals such as Nature Photonics, JACS, Angew. Chem., Int. Ed., Macromolecules, Advanced Materials, among others, and has been an Associate Editor for Polymer Chemistry (RSC) since July 2013. He is also on the advisory board for Macromolecules (ACS) and ACS Applied Energy Materials (ACS).