Christine Wen

Dr. Christine Wen is a professor of urban planning, currently at Texas A&M University. She specializes in community economic development. Before entering academia, she worked for Good Jobs First in D.C. producing research in support of transparency and accountability in government processes and development schemes.
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Christine received her Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University in 2019 with her interdisciplinary research, supported mainly by the C.V. Starr Fellowship, that bridges developmental sociology, critical geography, political economy, and labor studies. She was also part of an award-winning team that pushed for a more just and equitable tax system for the rural parts of upstate New York.
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In her former life, she worked a year-long hydrology research project for the Earth Institute at Columbia University. Prior to that, she helped out with the cosmic microwave background radiation group at Princeton University while completing a bachelor's degree in physics there. And before that, at age 15, she received First-Class Honors with Distinctions in professional piano performance for the Associate Diploma from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Canada where she lived as a teenager.
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Christine now resides in eastern Texas with her dog Arthur, cats Salem and Billy, lizard Syren, and parrot Jake (now passed). She loves literature, science, philosophy, art, music, theater, and interior design, and spends her spare time writing stories, boating, bushcrafting, boxing, playing video games, swimming, cooking, studying foreign languages, hanging with friends, and finally picking up piano again after 17 years.