David Lee was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Suzhou, China. He received a master's degree in Mathematics from Hunter College of City University of New York in 1982. He earned both a master's and a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Columbia University in 1985.

He joined Bell Laboratories Research at Murray Hill in 1985 and became director of Networking Research Department in 1998. He was promoted to Vice President of Bell Labs Research in 1999. He has founded Bell Labs Research China and Asia Pacific in early 2000 and is now on an international assignment of managing the lab.

His current research interests include: communication protocol system integration, interface, interoperability and reliability; and all-optical network and next generation Internet protocol systems. He has more than 90 technical publications in journals and referenced conferences and three US patents.

David Lee is an IEEE Fellow and won the Distinguished Member of Technical Staff Award of Bell Laboratories Research in 1997. He has won IFIP International Conference PSTV-FORTE Best Paper Award in 2000.

He is an editor of IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, a Senior Editor of IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, an associate editor of Journal of Complexity, and serves at the Editorial Board of Electronica Sinica and Journal of Advanced Networks. He has also served at various technical program committees of international conferences. He is Execute committee member of Infocom 2004, was Program Co-chair of Infocom 2002, Vice-chair of Infocom 2001, Program Co-chair of ICNP 1994 and 2000, General Co-chair of ICNP 1996, and is Steering Committee Co-chair of ICNP.

David Lee has been a Visiting Faculty of National Institute of Standards and Technology (US), Adjunct Professor of Columbia University (US), Visiting Professor of Institute Nationale des Telecommunications (France), Guest Professor of Tsinghua University, Peking University, Fudan University, and Chinese Academy of Sciences (China). He is a Counselor of National Natural Science Foundation of China.