“I have worked with many talented and resilient youth who reached adulthood unprepared to be independent despite prior contact with a public system. My research focuses on providing the right supports to help all youth successfully transition to adulthood.”
Education
- PhD, Social Welfare, University of Washington (2012)
- MS, Social Work, Columbia University (2005)
- MPA, Public Administration, Columbia University (2005)
- BA, Psychology, Stanford University (1999)
Professional/Research Interests
Transitions to adulthood; juvenile justice; child welfare; youth aging out of foster care; agent-based modeling
Biography
JoAnn S. Lee, associate professor, focuses on improving public systems to better support the transition to adulthood for all youth. She applies a positive youth development lens to the study of transitions to adulthood. Her projects include topics such as the social support networks of older teens in foster care; the accumulation of risk and protective factors among adolescents; and implementing community supervision guidelines among probation staff. Her work is inspired by the diverse youth and families she worked with in both East San Jose, California and New York City.
While she uses traditional statistical methods (including logistic regression and latent class analysis), she founded the School of Social Work’s Institute for Social Complexity and Computation (ISSC) in 2026 to create a space where scholars and researchers can explore the use of a complex systems framework coupled with advanced computational methods to advance social work science. One such method which she uses is agent-based modeling (ABM), a type of computer simulation that explores how agents – like individuals and families – interact with each other and their environments.
Lee joined the UB school of Social Work in 2023 from George Mason University’s Department of Social Work. While at Mason, she earned her graduate certificate in Computational Social Science in 2021.