Rate My Professor Melissa Lee

Dr. Melissa Lee is a Senior Lecturer and ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) Fellow in the School of Mathematics, Faculty of Science at Monash University. She obtained her PhD in 2021 from Imperial College London under the supervision of Professor Martin W. Liebeck and holds bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Western Australia. Prior to joining Monash, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Auckland. Her career trajectory reflects rapid advancement in pure mathematics, marked by her contributions to finite group theory and leadership in academic organizations.

Lee's research specializes in finite permutation groups, their actions on discrete structures, group theory, and symmetry. She has resolved several longstanding open problems, notably through collaborative work on the Monster group, published in 'The maximal subgroups of the Monster' (Advances in Mathematics, 2025) and 'Explicit construction of the maximal subgroups of the Monster' (Journal of Algebra, 2026). Other key publications include 'A classification of finite primitive IBIS groups with alternating socle' (Journal of Group Theory, 2023), 'Extremely primitive groups and linear spaces' (Designs, Codes and Cryptography, 2023), and 'M, B and Co1 are recognisable by their prime graphs' (Journal of Group Theory, 2023). Her scholarship has earned over 127 citations. Lee received the Faculty of Science Research Excellence by an Early Career Researcher Award (joint winner, 2025) and the Dean's Award for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (2025). She serves as President of the Australian Algebra Group, co-leads computation in the ARC Centre of Excellence in Mathematics for Quantum Era Security and Trust (MathQuEST), and is an associate editor for Experimental Mathematics and Australasian Journal of Combinatorics since 2023. Her equity work includes mathematical modeling of gender representation in academia.