Charles Lee (Korean name Lee Jang-cheol), a world authority on structural variation (CNV) in the human genome, will launch next-generation genomic medicine research at The Catholic University of Korea.
The Catholic University of Korea said on the 1st that it appointed Charles Lee as an endowed professor in the Department of Microbiology at the College of Medicine to strengthen its research capacity.
Born in Seoul in 1969, Lee is a Korean Canadian scientist who immigrated to Canada the following year. After the Yale School of Medicine, he served as a professor at Harvard Medical School, and in 2012 at Seoul National University and in 2015 at Ewha Womans University as an invited endowed professor. He was selected as a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and he is also a full member of The Korean Academy of Science and Technology (KAST).
Lee served as an assistant and associate professor in the Department of Pathology at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and from 2013 to 2024 he was director of The Jackson Laboratory of Genome Medicine. He is currently a professor of genetics and an associate dean at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine.
In 2004, Lee was the first to identify that even if people share the same genes, the number of copies of those genes can differ. He found that a specific gene that normally exists as a pair may be three or more in some people, one or entirely absent in others. This is called "copy number variation (CNV)."
The discovery was assessed as offering a new clue to why individuals have different genetic traits. Since then, CNV research has expanded to reveal the genetic causes of various diseases, including rare diseases and cancer. For this achievement, in 2014 Lee became the first scientist of Korean descent to be named on Thomson Reuters' list of Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine candidates. At the time, he was mentioned alongside Stephen Scherer of the University of Toronto in Canada and Michael Wigler of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in the United States.
Recognizing these research achievements, in 2007 the international journal Science named him to its "Breakthrough of the Year," and in 2008 he received the Ho-Am Prize in Medicine. At 39, he was the youngest Ho-Am Prize laureate ever. In 2014 he was also selected as a Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher.
Lee has also been active in international genomics research. From 2017 to 2023 he served as president of the Human Genome Organisation (HUGO), and since 2014 he has co-chaired the Human Genome Structural Variation Consortium, leading international collaborative research. Starting in 2027, he is set to serve as editor-in-chief of the international journal "Human Genetics and Genomics Advances."
The Catholic University of Korea plans to leverage Lee's research experience and international network to integrate genome structural variation analysis technologies with clinical research.
Centering on the Department of Microbiology at the College of Medicine, it will pursue research on genome structural variation related to rare and intractable diseases and infectious diseases, including AI-based cell-genome convergence research, and expand a translational research base by linking with clinical data held by hospitals under the Catholic Medical Center. It also plans to strengthen joint research and international academic exchanges with overseas research institutions.
Choi Jun-gyu, president of The Catholic University of Korea, said, "Professor Charles Lee's research activities will serve as an important milestone for The Catholic University of Korea," adding, "His pioneering research and global leadership will inspire our researchers and talent, and drive the advancement of Precision Medicine and impactful new international collaborative research."