Lee studied computer science at Yonsei University in Seoul. She earned a bachelor's degree magna cum laude in 1996, and a master's degree in 1998, advised by Yoon-Chul Choy. After two years as a software engineer in South Korea, she went to the University of Maryland, College Park for continued study in computer science, earning a second master's degree in 2002 and completing her Ph.D. in 2006.[2] Her dissertation, Interactive Visualizations for Trees and Graphs, was supervised by Ben Bederson.[3]
She joined Microsoft Research in 2006, and was a senior principal researcher there from 2019 to 2024, when she returned to Yonsei University as a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering.[2]
Recognition
Lee was named to the IEEE Visualization Academy in 2020.[4]