Professor Sang Yup Lee

Sang Yup Lee, Ph.D. is Distinguished Professor at the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). He is also the Dean of KAIST Institutes, Head of the Metabolic Engineering National Research Laboratory, Director of the Center for Systems and Synthetic Biotechnology, Director of the Bioinformatics Research Center, and Director of the BioProcess Engineering Research Center at KAIST. He is an honorary professor of the University of Queensland in Australia and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in China, and an advisory professor of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China.
 
Sang Yup has published more than 470 journal papers and 580 patents. He has received many awards, including the Citation Classic Award, Elmer Gaden Award, Merck Metabolic Engineering Award, ACS Marvin Johnson Award, SIMB Charles Thom Award, POSCO TJ Park Prize, Amgen Biochemical Engineering Award, and the Ho Am Prize in Engineering among many others.
 
Sang Yup is well known for his impressive work on metabolic engineering of E. coli and other bacteria for production of the fuels, chemicals, materials, proteins, and pharmaceuticals. He has made a number of seminal contributions to the field of biochemical engineering, including advancing the use of genome-scale metabolic models for designing metabolic networks that can be used to over-produce metabolites and biopolymers, an approach he refers to as systems biotechnology. He has also made significant contributions in the fields of synthetic biology, industrial biotechnology, and nanobiotechnology.
 
He is currently a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the World Academy of Sciences, American Institute of Chemical Engineers, American Academy of Microbiology, Society for Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology, American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, Korean Academy of Science and Technology, and the National Academy of Engineering of Korea. He was also elected as a Foreign Member of the National Academy of Engineering USA.
 
Sang Yup is currently serving as Editor-in-Chief of Biotechnology Journal and editor and editorial board member for numerous journals. He has also served as a member of the Global Agenda Council of the World Economic Forum since it was founded. He has served as a Chairman of the Global Agenda Council on Emerging Technologies in 2011–2012, and as a Chairman of the Global Agenda Council on Biotechnology in 2012–2013. He founded the World Council on Industrial Biotechnology in 2010. He is currently serving as a member of the Presidential Advisory Committee on Science and Technology in Korea.
 
He earned his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Seoul National University in 1986, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Northwestern University in 1987 and 1991.
 
Watch SB6 Day 3: New Directions for Energy and Sustainability, Ideas Labs |The Union of Nanotechnology with Biotechnology | Lee Sang Yup, and Gasoline From Gut Bacteria? Yes, We Can.