Wei Bao obtained his B.S. in Astrophysics from Peking University in 1983, his M.S. from Institute of Theoretical Physics - Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1986, and his Ph.D. in Physics from the Johns Hopkins University in 1995. He worked as a consultant in AT&T Bell Laboratories - Murray Hill in 1994 and performed his postdoctoral research in Brookhaven National Laboratory from 1995 to 1998 before joining the Technical Staff of Los Alamos National Laboratory. He was a Distinguished University Professor at Renmin University of China in Beijing from 2009 to 2019.

Wei Bao was nominated a Fellow of American Physical Society in 2012 by Division of Condensed Matter Physics "for neutron scattering studies of the magnetic structure and spin dynamics of highly correlated electron systems". He was nominated a Fellow of the Physical Society of Hong Kong in 2022 "for his seminal works on correlated electron systems and disordered quantum systems subjected to the extreme conditions using neutron scattering techniques". He has also led the design and construction of a suite of innovative and complimentary cold-neutron inelastic spectrometers at China Advanced Research Reactor in Beijing as the PI of a RMB111 million National Key Research Infrastructure Project.