Sung-joo Lee BS, PhD

Sung Joo Lee is the chief executive officer and founder of Orum Therapeutics. He has initiated and led many research and drug discovery efforts, uniting diverse internal and external scientific teams. Before founding Orum in 2016, Sung Joo spent five years at LG Life Sciences and then more than six years at Sanofi; first as the Korea R&D leader and then as head of research for Asia Pacific R&D. In the latter role, he initiated and led projects around a virtual biotech model to co-invent drugs with biotech and academia teams based in Korea, China, and Japan.

He also oversaw collaborations with various partners in the region, including the Institute Pasteur, Asan Medical Center, and KAIST. Throughout his career, Sung Joo has worked to improve the therapeutic landscape for various diseases, including hepatitis B, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), diabetes, and Alzheimer’s disease. Sung Joo earned a PhD in biological modelling from the University of California, Berkeley. For two years, he worked as a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University, with a focus on distributed computing, protein and RNA folding, and coarse grain models.