Young-Ae Lee studied Medicine in Germany and in the USA. She did her postdoctoral work in human genetics and completed her training in pediatrics and allergology at Charité Children’s Hospital where she was appointed full professor at Charité Medical School. She was senior investigator in the National Genome Research Project and in Multiple Consortia on Allergic Disease Genetics. She subsequently became group leader at the MDC supported by a Helmholtz Association Distinguished Professorship and heads the pediatric allergy clinic at the Experimental and Clinical Research Center of MDC and Charité. Her research group uses multiomics approaches in large study groups of affected patients and families to understand disease risk, disease heterogeneity and longterm trajectories in allergic diseases and chronic inflammation, and to enable the development of novel diagnostic and predictive clinical tools.