After spending ten years with the Theoretical Physics Department at Bell Laboratories, Lee joined MIT in 1982. He has contributed to the field of "mesoscopic physics," or the study of small devices at low temperatures. He has also made important contributions to the theory of disordered electronic systems, among them the concept of universal conductance fluctuations. He was awarded the 2005 Dirac Medal of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics as well as the Oliver Buckley Prize of the American Physical Society. He is currently researching high temperature superconductors.