Raphael Carl Lee

Raphael C. Lee, MD, ScD, FACS

Raphael Carl Lee (born October 29, 1949, in Sumter, South Carolina) is an American surgeon, medical researcher, biomedical engineer, and entrepreneur.

Life

Lee spent his childhood and adolescence in South Carolina, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. During medical school and graduate school, he lived in Philadelphia, Chicago and Boston. Today, 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. He has also advanced understanding the biophysical mechanisms of tissue injury, particularly those related to electrical shock. Dr. Lee's research team is also recognized for discovering the capability of certain organic blockers of L-Type calcium channel to increase production of enzymes that degrade scar tissue. Some of these agents (i.e. verapamil) are now used globally to treat burn scars. Dr. Lee has also been consistently cited as a highly rated physician and surgeon by regional and national medical ranking magazines.

He currently serves as the Paul S. and Ailene T. Russell Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago and having held appointments in the departments of Surgery (Plastic), Medicine (Dermatology), Molecular Engineering, Molecular Medicine, and Organismal Biology and Anatomy. Dr. Lee has served as Director of the University of Chicago's Laboratory for Molecular Regeneration.

Lee graduated from Bishop England High School in Charleston, South Carolina and then studied engineering at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, South Carolina. He completed the electrical engineering curriculum in 1971 with an interest in biophysical applications. He then enrolled in the joint graduate studies program in medicine and engineering curriculum established by Temple University School of Medicine and Drexel University College of Engineering in central Philadelphia. Dr. Lee was elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha honor medical society, Tau Beta Pi engineering honor society and the Sigma Xi honor research society. He completed both M.D. and M.S. degrees in 1975. This was followed by general surgery residency training at the University of Chicago Hospitals in Chicago and then plastic surgery residency training at the Massachusetts General Hospital. While a resident at the University of Chicago, he enrolled in graduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. and in Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology doctoral program. He received a Sc.D. in bioelectrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1979. He received several significant awards for his research during his surgical residency training including the Schering Scholar Award in 1978 from the American College of Surgeons and MacArthur Prize Fellows Award in 1981 from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in Chicago.

He returned to Chicago in 1990 where he practices plastic surgery and teaches graduate courses in molecular pathogenesis of disease. He is now an investigator at the University of Chicago | who was elected to the Institute of Medicine of Chicago |, the National Academy of Engineering the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Lee has served as President of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, the Midwestern Association of Plastic Surgeons, the Drexel 100 Society, and the Society for Physical Regulation of Biology and Medicine. He is founder and chairman of RenaCyte BioMolecular Technologies (2005) and Avocet Polymer Technologies (1997). He is affiliated with the Chicago Electrical Trauma Rehabilitation Institute.

Current research

Lee's current 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

• Alpha Omega Alpha - Temple University
• Tau Beta Pi - Drexel University
• Schering Scholar in Surgery, American College of Surgeons
• Bucksbaum Institute for Clinical Excellence, Senior Faculty Scholar, UChicago Medicine
• Sigma Xi - Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• 1981 Fellow MacArthur Fellows Program
• 1985 Scholar Searle Scholars Program
• Distinguished Medical Alumnus Award, Temple University School of Medicine
• 1894 Engineering Society - University of South Carolina
• 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
• Member, American Surgical Association
• Member, Society of Black Academic Surgeons
• Fellow, [[American Association for the Advancement of Science]
• Drexel 100 Society, Drexel University
• Member, International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering
• 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

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