On April 25, KAIST announced that Distinguished Professor Sang Yup Lee from the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering will be receiving the 2013 Amgen Biochemical Engineering Award at the Biochemical and Molecular Engineering XVIII, which will take place in Beijing in June.

The Amgen Biochemical Engineering Award was established in 1993 by Amgen, a leading biotechnology company pioneering in human therapeutic products. It is awarded every two years in memory of James E. Bailey of California Institute of Technology to recognize excellent researchers with admirable qualities in the biochemical engineering field. The winner is given $5,000 and a commemorative plaque at the conference. Past recipients include world-renowned scholars such as Professor Daniel Wang from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Michael Shuler from Cornell University.

The first nine award winners have all been Americans and in 2011, Jens Nielsen of Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden became the first non-American to receive the award. Professor Lee is the first Asian recipient in the award’s history.

The Amgen Award panel commented, “Professor Lee was the most suitable nominee for he made significant contributions to the development of synthetic biology and industrial bioengineering by establishing systems metabolic engineering and by using micro-organism metabolic engineering to produce chemical material, fuel, protein, and drug production.”

Professor Lee, who founded systems metabolic engineering, is an expert in metabolic engineering of micro-organisms. He developed several strain strategies for efficient production of amino acids, polyester, nylon, biofuel, and their raw materials. He was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the American Industrial Microbiology Society, and the American Academy of Microbiology.

Currently, Professor Lee is a fellow at the Korean Academy of Science and Technology and National Academy Engineering of Korea, and an international member of the National Academy of Engineering in the United States. He is also working as a chair of the Global Agenda Council for biotechnology in the World Economic Forum.