Gillings School alumnus to serve as Taiwan’s EPA director

May 25, 2016

Dr. Ying-Yuan Lee (Photo courtesy of Minizest/Wikimedia)

Ying-Yuan Lee, PhD, alumnus of the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, has been named Minister of the Environmental Protection Administration of Taiwan.

Lee previously held a number of government positions in the Republic of China, including member of the National Parliament, Minister of the Council of Labor Affairs, Secretary-General of the executive branch and Secretary-General of the Democratic Progressive Party.

He yielded a senate seat in the government to serve in the challenging role of EPA minister at a historic time in Taiwan’s democracy.

On May 20, Taiwan inaugurated Dr. Ing-wen Tsai as Taiwan’s first woman president. Under her administration, the EPA is being expanded to a department-level ministry and will include oversight of natural resources. Tsai’s newly elected vice president, Dr. Chien-Jen Chen, who earned a doctorate in epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, is also a public health practitioner.

Lee earned a doctorate in health economics from the UNC Gillings School’s Department of Health Policy and Management in 1988. His wife, Dr. Yueh-Guey Huang, also a Gillings School graduate, earned a Doctor of Public Health degree in health policy and management in 1987.

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Gillings School of Global Public Health contact: David Pesci, director of communications, (919) 962-2600 or dpesci@unc.edu