Kang Lee receives OISE's first Distinguished Professor Award from U of T
May 6, 2011
By Jennifer Sipos-Smith
Kang Lee, a professor in the department of Human Development and Applied Psychology at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) of the University of Toronto, is a recipient of the prestigious University of Toronto Distinguished Professor in Developmental Neuroscience and Education award.
Esther Geva, the Chair of the department of Human Development and Applied Psychology offered her excitement for Kang and the future of his work: "Kang will continue to conduct outstanding research, build capacity in cognitive developmental neuroscience and education at OISE, and help to strengthen the profile of HDAP, ICS, and OISE as a hub of excellence in this area."
Dean Julia O'Sullivan also shared her pride and enthusiasm for Kang's achievement: "The prestigious University of Toronto Distinguished Professor Awards are limited to no more than 3% of the tenured faculty."
The purpose of the program is to advance and recognize individuals with highly distinguished accomplishments and those who display exceptional promise, who maintain an extraordinary level of activity in their research and scholarly work and have achieved pre-eminence in their field in line with the University's stated objectives and emerging priorities. There are currently five University of Toronto Distinguished Professors.
Here are some of the highlights featured about Kang Lee, and his research in conjunction with the award:
Kang Lee is a developmental psychologist who studies the emergence and development of social cognition and social behaviour, and the underlying cognitive-cultural-neural mechanisms. Over the last 15 years, he has mainly focused on two major issues. The first is the development of moral cognition and action with a specific focus on verbal deception from cross cultural perspectives. He uses experimental methods to investigate how children from different cultural backgrounds come to grips with the concept and moral implication of lying and truth-telling, whether children are able to detect others' lies, and whether children can tell convincing lies in various social situations. He also examines the cognitive-social-cultural factors that affect the development of lying and truth-telling. In addition, he uses neuroscience methods (e.g., EEG and fMRI) to explore neural correlates of moral cognition and action including lying.
The second focus of his research is on the development of social perception with a specific focus on face processing. He uses psychophysical methods to study how children and adults with differential social cultural experiences process both stable and dynamic social information in a face. Regarding stable facial information, he focuses on how children and adults perceive, encode, and recognize different kinds of faces (e.g., race, age, and gender). Regarding dynamic facial information, he studies how children and adults detect and interpret others' gaze displays in various social contexts. He also uses neuroscience methods (e.g., EEG and fMRI) to examine neural correlates of face processing.
Kang Lee's work has been supported by continuous funding from the SSHRC (since 1995), NSERC (since 1997), and NIH (since 2004). He is currently a PI on a US$1.8 million NIH grant and a key Co-PI on three on-going NIH funded research programs. He is also a PI or a Co-PI on several grants funded by the NSF of China since 2004. Dr. Lee was a recipient of the Premier's Research Excellence Award in 1999, an Outstanding Overseas Chinese Scholar Award from the Chinese Government in 2004, and a Leaders Opportunity Award from the CFI in 2006. In 2010, he was elected as a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science. He was elected to serve as the Scientist Director of the Canadian Psychological Association in 2003. Since 2004, he has served as an associate editor of Developmental Science, one of the top three developmental journals in the world.