A little about me...

Hello! My name is Jason (or Jaemyoung) Lee (Korean: 이재명). I was born and mostly raised in South Korea, except for the 5 years I spent in Southern California as a kid. It was during those 5 years when I fell in love with astrophysics and decided that I will become an astrophysicist.

In 3rd grade, I had to make a pop-up book on a Solar System planet for a class project (my planet was Venus), and even though my mom had to make most of the book itself since I am far from a crafty person, I found myself suddenly drawn into the world of astrophysics.

While my initial interests were in planetary science, I engaged in cosmology research during my final years of undergrad at Korea University and the University of Toronto, which propelled me to my current path.

When I am not doing research, I love to travel and play classical music (piano and violin).

My academic footprint

Korea University

At Korea University, I did a double major in Physics and English (mostly Literature) and had a lot of fun in my really close-knit orchestra. I also had the opportunity to be an intern in Professor Eunil Won's lab where I learned how to code and use some software often-used in cosmology.

University of Toronto

Although I was a Study Abroad student for just one year, this was where I first got to be involved in full-blown cosmology research. Thanks to Professor J. Richard Bond, Pavel Motloch, Alex van Engelen, and George Stein, I had an invaluable experience working on the Non-Gaussianity of the Cosmic Infrared Background and Its Gravitational Lensing. The project presented many challenges and dragged on well into my graduate student years, but we managed to complete and publish the project in the end, and I learned an immense amount.

University of Pennsylvania

At Penn, I transitioned to SN Ia cosmology when I started working with my Ph.D. advisor, Professor Masao Sako. During my Ph.D., I had the pleasure of exploring a topic that had not been considered in SN Ia cosmology: wavelength-dependent atmospheric effects. Furthermore, we discovered that we can even measure SN Ia redshifts by taking advantage of these effects! I also had the opportunity to work with Professor Ravi Sheth on model-independent BAO scales, which was quite exciting as well.