Boeing Endowed Professor, Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering
Director, Computational Molecular Biology Program
AI Core Director, Nathan Shock Center for Basic Biology of Aging
University of Washington, Seattle
MS/PhD (advisor: Daphne Koller), Stanford University, 2009
BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, KAIST, 2001
suinlee AT cs.washington.edu
536, Paul G. Allen Center, Seattle, WA 98195-2350
Professor Su-In Lee is the Boeing Endowed Professor of Computer Science at the University of Washington (UW). She earned her Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2009 under Professor Daphne Koller and joined UW in 2010 after serving as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University.
She is renowned for her groundbreaking research at the intersection of AI, biology, and medicine, and widely recognized as a pioneer in explainable AI (XAI). Among her seminal contributions is the SHAP framework (Lundberg and Lee, NeurIPS’17 oral; cited over 40,000 times), which has transformed the interpretation of machine learning models across disciplines.
She has been honored with major awards, including the Samsung Ho-Am Prize in Engineering (the “Korean Nobel Prize,” as its first woman recipient in 34 years), the ISCB Innovator Award, and the NSF CAREER Award. She is an American Cancer Society Research Scholar, an AIMBE Fellow, and an ISCB Distinguished Fellow.
Her recent work advances fundamental principles of XAI and applies them to biomedicine—from uncovering molecular drivers of disease to auditing clinical AI systems—fundamentally reshaping how AI is integrated into biomedical research and healthcare. This integration has enabled novel discoveries and produced numerous awards and highly cited publications spanning AI, molecular biology, and clinical medicine.
Three is a magic number: Professor Su-In Lee earns trio of honors by Allen School News.
2024 Samsung Ho-Am Prize in Engineering, YouTube video (8.5 mins)
The 2024 ISCB Innovator Award—Dr Su-In Lee by the International Society for Computational Biology
Professor Su-In Lee, the first female recipient of the Engineering Award... "The essence of research is to create a better world." by The JoongAng and many related newspaper articles
Distinguished Fellow, International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) (2025)
Boeing Endowed Professorship (2025)
Recognized as the “Korean Nobel Prize.” First woman to receive the Engineering award in its 34-year history
"Dr. Su-In Lee is a world-renowned scholar who had pioneered the field of explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) and its application in the biomedical fields..." (more)
AIMBE Fellow, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) (2024)
Recognized as being among the top 2% of medical and biological engineers
The ISCB Innovator Award, International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) (2024)
Awarded to a leading mid-career scientist who has consistently made outstanding contributions to the field of computational biology and continues to forge new directions
"Dr. Lee has made remarkable strides in integrating artificial intelligence (AI) with biomedicine. Her pioneering work in AI, notably the SHAP framework and subsequent algorithms, has revolutionized the interpretability of machine learning models, enabling profound insights into complex biological phenomena. Her research, spanning prestigious publications and impactful applications across various domains, underscores her profound contributions to computational biology and AI."
Paul G. Allen Career Development Professorship (2021)
Annual Science in Medicine Lecture by UW School of Medicine (2018)
Best Lecture, Computational Genomics Winter Institute, UCLA (2018)
American Cancer Society Research Scholar (2015)
NSF CAREER Award (2014)
Finalist. Microsoft Research New Faculty Fellowship Program, Microsoft (2013)
Samsung Lee Kun Hee Fellowship
Stanford Graduate Fellowship, Stanford University
The President of KAIST Award, awarded to the 1st runner-up for academic excellence, KAIST (2001)
Merit-based full scholarship from KAIST
Gold Prize, 1st place, at the Samsung Humantech Paper Competition (2000)