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Lee Yeon Joo is a planetary scientist specializing in Venus spectroscopy and imaging. She is co-investigator of the ultraviolet imager on board the Akatsuki and VenSpec-U the upcoming EnVision as well as guest investigator of BepiColombo. She is the chief investigator of the Planetary Atmospheres Group in the Pioneer Research Center for Climate and Earth Science at the Institute for Basic Science. She is on the Early Career Scientist (ECS) committee of International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences (IAMAS) and a member and representative of International Commission on Planetary Atmospheres and their Evolution (ICPAE). She will serve as a vice-chair for the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) Sub-Commission B4 on Terrestrial Planets at the General Assembly scheduled to be held in Busan in 2024.

Education
Lee started her B.S. majoring in physics at Chung-Ang University before transferring to Yonsei University, which is where she obtained a B.S. and M.Sc. in atmospheric science. Supervised by Kim Jhoon, her thesis was a study on the tropopause in order to better understand the stratosphere-troposphere exchange. Dr. rer. nat. was completed in natural sciences at the Institute for Geophysics and Extraterrestrial Physics of TU Braunschweig in partnership of the Planetary Atmospheres research group of Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, which is also where she did her postdoc.

Career
Lee has been involved with several probes, Venus Express,   Akatsuki and EnVision. Her role started as an invited research associate at Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in the Akatsuki team and later became a member of the science observation planning team and then co-investigator of the ultraviolet imager (UVI) on board the orbiter. While in Japan, she was also a project researcher at the University of Tokyo and a guest investigator of the ESA–JAXA BepiColombo mission. She is also co-investigator of the VenSpec-U instrument on the upcoming EnVision orbiter developed by the European Space Agency. Within Europe, she has been a visiting scientist and later researcher at DLR Institute for Planetary Research and EU researcher.

In addition to orbiters, she has been involved in Venus observations with ground-based observations with JAXA in Japan, NASA Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii, UVES/VLT/ESO in Chile, Subaru Telescope, and Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). She led the Venus Faraway observation campaign which consisted of the Hisaki, Akatsuki and BepiColombo spacecraft and six ground-based telescopes.

In 2022, she became the chief investigator of the Planetary Atmospheres Group within the Pioneer Research Center for Climate and Earth Science at the Institute for Basic Science. As the head of South Korea's first research group studying atmospheres of other planets in our solar system, her team will focus on the long-term volatility of Venus, characteristics of the atmosphere of Venus, and changes in the atmosphere over time. Data will be acquired from ground-based telescopes and spacecraft, including the BepiColombo and Akatsuki missions as well as series of yet to be launched CubeSats. The CubeSats are expected to cost about 3 billion KRW each, will be launched every three years, can view the entire planet instead of a narrow range by large probes, and will provide supplementary data to fill in the gaps between other missions. The first is planned to be launched in 2026.

Research
Some of her research has been on unknown absorbers in the atmosphere of Venus, which absorb significant solar radiation. Using multiple spacecraft and telescopes, including Venus Express, Akatsuki, MESSENGER, and the Hubble Space Telescope, her research suggests a connection between Venus' cloud dynamics and its winds, where solar radiation absorption by the clouds influences temperature changes and, subsequently, wind patterns. The unknown absorbers play a role in altering the planet's albedo, impacting how much energy is reflected back into space.

In collaboration with Takeshi Horinouchi of Hokkaido University, her efforts revealed that the super-rotation speed at the cloud tops not only varies over time but also differs between the northern and southern hemispheres. Additionally, the team identified planetary-scale atmospheric waves at the cloud tops, suggesting potential interactions with the super-rotation phenomenon. The asymmetry of the hemispheres may be linked to the unknown absorbers.

Albedo has not been static but increased over a ten year period which potentially could be the first identified climate change on another celestial body.

Other research noted that much like the blooming of microalgae influences the albedo on Earth, the thickness of the clouds on Venus results in albedo to be very high in the majority of the wavelengths. Venus, in and of itself, cannot become brighter, but it can get darker. With an increase in absorbers wind velocity increased from 80 to 90 meters a second to 110 meters a second between 2007 and 2012, respectively.

Through a comparison of the Lagrangian derivative of UV albedo and horizontal divergence, one of her studies established a connection between variations in cloud-top SO2 and vertical flow. This relationship was examined for both independent air parcels and the mean field. The findings indicate that the supply of SO2 by the solar-fixed mean flow is influenced by thermal tides, and the quantity of SO2 also responds to transient, localized ascending flows.

Her research has also called into question some of the methodology used to estimate the surface of an exoplanet, its rotational period, and the presence of an atmosphere. Established research has predominately used time-series measurements of reflected starlight to understand those planetary aspects. But as super-rotating winds on Venus has changed its brightness, this could have further reaching implications for exoplanets. The research team provided new models to analyze observation data of other planets.

Fellowship and career highlights

 * 2021: 2020 Top 50 Physics articles, Nature Communications
 * 2020: Selected as featured image, Nature Communications
 * 2019:	Selected as research highlight, American Astronomical Society
 * 2019: EU Horizon2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Individual Fellowships
 * 2009: PhD Fellowship from the International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS) on Physical Processes in the Solar System and Beyond at the Universities of Braunschweig and Göttingen, Germany