KYONGBUM LEE DEAN OF THE SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING AND PROFESSOR OF CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL ENGINEERING
Dean Kyongbum Lee credits an abiding mentorship as the bedrock of his professional career—both that which he has received and his ability to provide it to students at Tufts. Speaking about first discovering Tufts, he said “I was looking for a place where I could continue my research. But it was also important to me that it was at a place where I felt I could also be very engaged in mentoring students. That was something of value to me in my workplace. The advice I had from my mentors, and who I credit largely for getting me enthusiastic about being a professor, was to find a workplace where what you want to do is also what the workplace wants to do.” That alignment of values has been instrumental in shaping Dean Lee’s time at Tufts, where he has taught, researched, and administered for two decades. “I felt that the Chemical and Biological Engineering department at Tufts really did care a lot about the student experience as much as they cared about the research you do. That was a really good fit for me.” The close connections that students can make with their professors while still doing deep and varied research is a hallmark of the Tufts undergraduate experience. That variety of experience extends beyond the tools of Dean Lee’s lab, however. His intellectual curiosity is far reaching and nonlinear, like his path to the field of chemical engineering in the first place. “Both of my parents went to law school. As immigrants, they felt that
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I should study something quantitative because… it would be difficult to be successful in fields that were more subjective. Something quantitative is quote-unquote less subjective, which, of course, is a limited way of looking at disciplines.” A passion for multiple, seemingly disparate, disciplines is what initially drove Dean Lee’s academic life. “I liked math and chemistry in high school, but I also really liked my history classes and literature classes and languages. When I started college, I actually was going to double major in German literature and chemical engineering. Later, I realized that I appreciated the rigor of chemical engineering… mainly because I felt the engineering curriculum at Stanford, where I went to college, was set up to teach students to solve problems and perform rigorous analysis to find solutions that have an impact.” Research plays a major role in Dean Lee’s professional life, something which he describes as “joyful.” His research lately has focused on gut bacteria and the “metabolism, or the process that living things use to take chemicals from the environment and turn them into resources…One of the most interesting outcomes of the Human Genome Project was the fact that they found many, many more bacterial genes in the human body than human genes. Several hundred times more.” Studying the chemical relationship between the many human and bacterial genes drives his work. “My lab is interested in studying how bacteria communicate with
the human body. As a chemical engineer, I look at chemical interactions and study complex chemistry [and in this case] look at the chemical communication between the bacteria and the human body.” But research is about more than just an academic interest—it is also professionally rewarding. “One of the things that I think you have to be as a leader is to be authentic. It’s easier for me to be authentic about research and what it’s like to mentor students when I’m doing it myself.” For upcoming plans, Dean Lee is excitedly looking forward to teaching again. “I’m still a professor and I’m planning on teaching a class in the fall. I took [the 2022–2023 academic] year off because the schedule didn’t work out, but I figured out a way to start being in the classroom again. Tufts is one of those places where you can be an administrator but also a faculty member. That’s an important connection I can have with my colleagues. I can appreciate the challenges and joys of teaching and running a research group.” Engaging with people to accomplish good in the world is part of the School of Engineering’s distinctive character. “We have a strong culture of student engagement here…What I would like to do as an engineering school is come up with unique solutions [to the world’s problems] that people will embrace.” And with passionate leaders like Dean Lee here to guide and support Tufts undergraduates, there is little that can stand in the way of that goal.
