shwanlee

Seung Hwan "Allen" Lee is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Gregory Stephanopoulos Research Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His passion for engineering microorganisms to enable sustainable energy and chemical production began during his undergraduate research at UCLA under Prof. James Liao. After completing his undergraduate studies, he earned his Ph.D. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from Rice University, where he worked under the guidance of Prof. Ramon Gonzalez. His undergraduate and doctoral research focused on the efficient biological utilization of one-carbon (C1) compounds through engineering native and synthetic metabolic pathways. As one of the co-inventors of the Formyl-CoA Elongation (FORCE) pathways, he helped develop a novel approach for converting C1 feedstock into value-added small molecules. In his postdoctoral work, he has expanded his research to include engineering non-model organisms, leveraging their inherent abilities to efficiently utilize C1 and C2 feedstocks. Beyond his research, Allen is actively engaged in biotechnology and climate technology communities, participating in organizations such as the Society for Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology (SIMB), the Engineering Biology Research Consortium (EBRC), and the MIT Energy Conference.

Allen's previous publications (Google Scholar)

February 2025