Sumi Lee is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Duksung Women's University, South Korea. She graduated from UCLA in 2014 with a PhD dissertation entitled, "Toward a New Paradigm of East Asian Yogācāra Buddhism: Taehyŏn 大賢 (ca. 8th century CE), a Korean Yogācāra monk, and his Predecessors."

Sumi Lee specializes in Korean Buddhism, East Asian Buddhism, and the broader Yogācāra tradition, with a special focus on the relationship between Yogācāra and tathāgatagarbha thought. She has published several articles on the Awakening of Faith, the seminal treatise in the East Asian Buddhist tradition, and its exegeses, including ““Middle Way” Approach on Buddhist Ethics: Wŏnhyo on the Doctrinal Problem of the Buddha-nature and the Icchantika” (2019) and “On the Ālayavijñāna in the Awakening of Faith: Comparing and Contrasting Wŏnhyo and Fazang’s Views on Tathāgatagarbha and Ālayavijñāna” (2019).