Daeyeol Lee

Daeyeol Lee is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Neuroscience and Psychological and Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins University, holding dual appointments in the Department of Neuroscience (School of Medicine) and the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences (Krieger School of Arts and Sciences). He joined Johns Hopkins in 2019 after 12 years at Yale University, where he held the Dorys McConnell Duberg Professorship.

Dr. Lee received his bachelor's degree in Economics from Seoul National University in Korea and his PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, followed by postdoctoral training in neurophysiology at the University of Minnesota.

Lee is widely recognized as a pioneer in the field of neuroeconomics, which integrates neuroscience, economics, psychology, and artificial intelligence to study decision-making processes. His research focuses on the neural mechanisms of decision making, reinforcement learning, and numerical cognition, with particular emphasis on the roles of the prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia. His laboratory investigates how the brain flexibly switches among different decision-making strategies and how temporal and numerical information is represented in neural circuits.

His recent publications show a consistent focus on adaptive decision making, neural timescales, social cognition, and value representation, with applications to understanding both typical and impaired cognitive processes. His work employs diverse methodologies including electrophysiology, computational modeling, and behavioral experiments.

Among his notable honors are:

• 2021 Samsung Hoam Prize in Medicine
• James S. McDonnell Foundation Cognitive Neuroscience Grant
• Fellowship for Prominent Collegians from Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies
• Loucks Lecturer at University of Washington (2008)
• Wellington-Burnham Lecturer at Tufts University (2009)

Dr. Lee has published over 90 original research articles and authored the book Birth of Intelligence (Oxford University Press, 2020). His laboratory currently includes postdoctoral researchers, lab staff, and graduate students working on projects related to adaptive inductive bias, competitive social interaction, and abstract navigation or mental simulation. He has served as an editor for the Journal of Neuroscience and is currently a reviewing editor for eLife.