On September 18, Prof. Sang Yup Lee guested at the “Inspiring Wisdom” Distinguished Lectures. He delivered a wonderful speech under the title "Microbial metabolic engineering for chemicals and materials".

Prof. Sang Yup Lee earned his Ph.D. degree in chemical engineering from Northwestern University in 1991. Currently, he is University Distinguished Professor and Dean of KAIST Institutes. He is also the Director of Center for Systems and Synthetic Biotechnology, Director of BioProcess Engineering Research Center, and Director of Bioinformatics Research Center. Regarding the international activities, he is an Honorary Professor of University of Queensland, Australia, Honorary Professor of Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Scientific Advisory Committee member of Joint BioEnergy Institute, USA, among others.

Professor Lee’s research interests include metabolic engineering, systems and synthetic biology, industrial biotechnology, and nanobiotechnology. He has developed various platform metabolic engineering technologies and pioneered the so called “systems metabolic engineering”.  He has published more than 470 journal papers, and 585 patents registered or applied. He also authored or edited 63 books or book chapters including “Metabolic Engineering”, “Systems Biology and Biotechnology of E. coli”, and “Systems Metabolic Engineering”. Due to his pioneering work in metabolic engineering, he was elected Foreign Associate of National Academy of Engineering of the USA in 2010.

Professor Lee has received many domestic and international awards, including the Young Presidential Scientist Award, National Academy of Engineering Young Engineer Award, National Order of Merit, Elmer Gaden Award, Merck Metabolic Engineering Award, and more recently the Amgen Biochemical Engineering Award. 

Professor Lee has organized numerous conferences and symposia, including International E. coli Alliance meeting and Metabolic Engineering Conference. He is Editor-in-Chief of Biotechnology Journal, Section Editor of BMC Systems Biology, Editor of mBio, Associate Editor of Biotechnology and Bioengineering, ACS Synthetic Biology, Metabolic Engineering, Bioprocess and Biosystems Engineering, Microbial Cell Factories, and board member of many journals. He also serves as a scientific advisory board member for several companies and institutes.