Sarah Yunmi Lee
Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Chemistry, KAIST
| Office | +82-42-350-2842, #506 (E6-6) |
| Lab | +82-42-350-2882, #611 (E6-6) |
| E-mail | sarahyunmi@kaist.ac.kr |
Sarah Yunmi earned her BS in Chemistry from KAIST in 2009, where she conducted her undergraduate research with Prof. Sukbok Chang, sparking her early interest in catalysis. Motivated to further explore catalysis, Sarah pursued her PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the guidance of Prof. Gregory C. Fu. Her doctoral research focused on the synthetic and mechanistic studies of asymmetric nucleophilic catalysis with planar-chiral DMAP derivatives and chiral phosphines. Following her PhD (2014), she joined the laboratory of Prof. John F. Hartwig at UC Berkeley as an NIH postdoctoral fellow where her research centered on the development and mechanistic investigation of Pd-catalyzed direct functionalizations through Ag-mediated C-H activation.
Sarah began her independent career as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Yonsei University in 2018, later serving as an Associate Professor. In 2025, she returned to KAIST, her alma mater, where she currently serves as an Associate Professor. Her research program focuses on the design, discovery, and development of new catalytic platforms for organic and organometallic transformations, with emphasis on asymmetric catalysis, as well as advancing the mechanistic understanding of catalytic processes.
