Yoonseung Amelia Lee, Ph.D., is a Translational Scientist in the Naik Lab, where she works to bridge discoveries in tissue immunity and regeneration with patient care in inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.

Amelia received her B.S. from Seoul National University in Korea and earned her Ph.D. from Paris Descartes University in the laboratory of Dr. Jean-Laurent Casanova, where she studied the human genetic determinants of susceptibility to herpes simplex encephalitis. There, she came to see patients not as the endpoint of research, but as one of its most informative starting points. She then joined the laboratory of Dr. Donna Farber at Columbia University as a postdoctoral fellow, studying organ-specific immunity in patients with asthma and investigating how immune cells are shaped by the tissues they inhabit.

Amelia joined the Naik Lab in 2026 to study the mechanisms that shape treatment response and disease progression in human inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. By following patients longitudinally across the course of disease and treatment—and pairing deep molecular profiling of tissues with clinical data—she aims to understand how inflammation durably reshapes the epithelium and its resident immune cells, and how these changes influence patients’ clinical outcomes. Her long-term goal is to translate these biological signatures into biomarkers and therapeutic strategies that improve treatment decisions, make care more personalized, and reduce the burden of treatment for patients.

Outside the lab, Amelia enjoys attending live performances and experimenting with new recipes, with varying degrees of reproducibility.