W. P. Andrew Lee


Wei-Ping Andrew Lee is a Taiwanese-American hand surgeon and medical researcher. He is presently the dean of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School and executive vice president for academic affairs and provost of UT Southwestern Medical Center. Lee focuses on translational research on immune modulation for vascularized composite allotransplantation and the implementation of protocols to minimize immunosuppression in hand transplant and other VCA programs.

Early life and education

Lee was born in the town of Gangshan in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, where his father was serving in the Republic of China Air Force. He immigrated to the United States at the age of 15 to join his siblings. He followed his siblings to different towns due to their job re-location, and went to three high schools in three years while adapting to his new country and learning a new language.
Lee graduated with honors from Harvard College in 1979 with a bachelor's degree in physics. He received his medical degree from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He received plastic surgery training at the Massachusetts General Hospital and completed his orthopedic hand fellowship at the Indiana Hand to Shoulder Center. In 1991, he joined the academic faculty at Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, where he became the Director of Plastic Surgery Research Laboratory and Chief of Hand Service in Department of Surgery.

Career

In 2002, Lee was named the division chief of plastic surgery at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and moved to Johns Hopkins Hospital in 2010 in the Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. From 2010 to 2019, he was the Milton T. Edgerton, M.D., Professor and Chairman of the Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at Johns Hopkins. He chaired the Associate Professor Promotion Committee of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine from 2014 to 2017 and was Chair of the Medical Board from 2016 to 2018.
In 2019, Lee became the 16th dean of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School and executive vice president for academic affairs and provost of UT Southwestern Medical Center where he is professor of plastic surgery and holds the Atticus James Gill, M.D. Chair in Medical Science.

Research

He has led one of the largest hand and arm transplant programs in the field, and his group was especially focused on restoring functions to military servicemen with upper extremity amputations that resulted from combat injuries.
In March 2018, Lee oversaw the team that performed the world’s first total penis and scrotum transplant. The operation included transplants of the penis, scrotum, and abdominal wall to a wounded serviceman and was the most complex surgery of its type.
Lee has authored about 230 original peer-reviewed publications and 40 textbook chapters and co-edited the book Transplantation of Composite Tissue Allografts,. He has served on the editorial boards of Transplantation, Journal of Surgical Research' and Hand. He co-founded Vascularized Composite Allo-transplantation in 2014 and serves as its co-Editor.

Publications