Sang Yup Lee received B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Seoul National University in 1986, and M.S. and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Northwestern University in1991. Currently, he is Distinguished Professor at the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. He is also Director of Center for Systems and Synthetic Biotechnology, Director of BioProcess Engineering Research Center, and Director of Bioinformatics Research Center at KAIST. He is honorary professor of several universities around the world.
He has published more than 490 journal papers, and filed/registered 580 patents. He has received many awards, including Ho Am Prize in Engineering, and is currently Fellow of AAAS, AAM, AIChE, SIMB, AIMBE, TWAS, KAST, and NAEK, and Foreign Member of US National Academy of Engineering. He is currently serving as Editor-in-Chief of Biotechnology Journal and editor of many journals. He has also served as a Chairman of the Global Agenda Council on Emerging Technologies, and Chairman of the Global Agenda Council on Biotechnology of World Economic Forum. He founded the World Council on Industrial Biotechnology and served as a Chairman. He is currently a member of the Presidential Advisory Committee on Science and Technology in Korea.