Keun Lee is Distinguished Professor of Seoul National University (economics), a Fellow of the CIFAR (Canada), the President Elect of the Korean Economic Association, and the Chairman of the Center for Economic Catch-up. He is also an editor of Research Policy, and associate editor of Industrial and Corporate China. He is the winner of the 2014 Schumpeter Prize for his monograph on Schumpeterian Analysis of Economic Catch-up (2013 Cambridge Univ. Press), and also the 2019 Kapp Prize by EAEPE. He is also awarded the title of EBES Fellow of the Year 2023 by the EBES. He write regularly for Project Syndicate.

Previously, He served as the Vice-chairman of the National Economic Advisory Council for the chair and President of Korea, also as the President of the International Schumpeter Society (2016-18), as a member of the Committee for Development Policy of UN (2013-18), and as a GFC member of the World Economic Forum (2016-19). He obtained Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley. His total citations received is about 14,400 with H-index of 55 and I-10 index of 157 (Google Scholar).