Raphael Carl Lee

Raphael C. Lee, MD, ScD, FACS

Raphael Lee (born 1949) is an American surgeon, medical researcher, and biomedical engineer.

Early life and education

Raphael Carl Lee was born in 1949, in Sumter, South Carolina, to a family of physicians (his father, uncles, and cousins).

He graduated from high school in 1967, before enrolling in the University of South Carolina in Columbia, South Carolina to study electrical engineering. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering in 1971. Lee then attended Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to study biomechanical engineering, earning a Master of Science in 1975. That same year, he graduated with his M.D. from Temple University School of Medicine, serving his general surgery residency at University of Chicago Hospitals-Chicago.

Lee also graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a Sc.D in biomedical engineering in 1979, while completing a residency in plastic surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital.

During his residencies, he received several awards for his research, including the Schering Scholar Award in 1978 from the American College of Surgeons. Lee was also one of the first recipients of the MacArthur Fellows Program in 1981, from the MacArthur Foundation.

Career

He practices surgical, biomechanical, and molecular engineering research at the University of Chicago and at the Chicago Electrical Trauma Research Institute. Mostly, his research has focused on advancing the care of trauma, injuries, and scars. Lee is recognized for discovering the application of certain classes of amphiphilic block copolymers to mimic several fundamental protective processes of natural stress proteins in cells that perform cellular self-repair capability following injury.

Lee has served as Director of the University of Chicago's Burn Center and the Laboratory for Molecular Regeneration. In 2020, he received the University of Chicago's Alumni Association Golden Key Award. He currently serves as a Professor in the Departments of Surgery and Medicine at the University of Chicago.

Lee's research focuses on developing methods to assess and improve patient patient fitness for surgery, development of therapies to enhance survival following trauma or radiation, and to integrate control systems science into pharmacology.

Selected awards

• Schering Scholar in Surgery, American College of Surgeons
• Bucksbaum Institute for Clinical Excellence, Senior Faculty Scholar, UChicago Medicine
• 1981 Fellow MacArthur Fellows Program
• 1985 Scholar Searle Scholars Program
• Distinguished Medical Alumnus Award, Temple University School of Medicine
• Fellow, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering
• Life Fellow, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Fellow, Biomedical Engineering Society
• Fellow, American College of Surgeons
• Fellow, International College of Surgeons
• Fellow, American Association of Plastic Surgeons
• 1988 James Barrett Brown Award, American Association of Plastic Surgeons
• 1995 Lindberg Basic Science Award, American Burn Association
• 1998 Awarded Golden Key to City of Shanghai, Mayors Office
• 1996 Lindberg Basic Science Award, American Burn Association
• 2018 Pierre Galletti Award, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering
• Honoree, South Carolina African American History Calendar

Works

• R. C. Lee; Ernest G. Cravalho; John Francis Burke, eds. (1992). Electrical trauma: the pathophysiology, manifestations and clinical management. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-38345-5.
• Raphael C Lee; Mary Capelli-Schellpfeffer; Kathleen M. Kelley, eds. (1994). Electrical Injury: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Prevention, Therapy & Rehabilitation. New York Academy of Sciences. ISBN 0-89766-864-2.
• Chin-tu Chen; Raphael C Lee; J-X Shih; Min-Ha Zhong, eds. (1999). Occupational Electrical Injury and Safety. New York Academy of Sciences. ISBN 1-57331-232-0.
• Raphael C Lee; Florin Despa; Kimm Jon Hamann, eds. (2005). Cell injury: mechanisms, responses, and repair. New York Academy of Sciences. ISBN 978-1-57331-616-3.
• Raphael C Lee and Anna Chien The Doctor's Plague: Germs, Childbed Fever, and the Strange Story of Ignac Semmelweis. (Book Review) Perspectives in Biology and Medicine - Volume 48, Number 4, Autumn 2005, pp. 616–618
• M. Capelli-Schellpfeffer, M. and R.C.Lee, "Electrical Shock" in Encyclopedia of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Webster, J.G., Ed., John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1998
• R. C. Lee, "Electrical and Lightning Injuries" in Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, 15th Edition, Braunwald et al., eds. McGraw-Hill, New York 2001

Author or coauthor of more than 275 journal publications and book chapters