P.J. Lee received his doctoral degree from McMaster University in Canada, after which he worked for Home Oil Company and then joined the Geological Survey of Canada in Calgary in 1979. In 1996, he became Professor and Chairman of the Department of Earth Sciences, National Cheng Kung University of Taiwan. After returning to Canada as President of Perspective Information Inc., he was involved in a new project for a computer system with the National Cheng Kung University.
P.J. Lee had over forty years of experience in petroleum geology, basin analysis, and petroleum resource evaluation, and developed a computer-aided Petroleum Information Management and Resource Evaluation System (PETRIMES/W) for estimating undiscovered petroleum resources. He had more than 80 scientific articles published in various international journals.
Among the many honors P.J. Lee received were the Gold Medal in 1993 presented by the First Annual Celebration of Excellence in Information Management in the Federal Government of Canada; he was the recipient of the Commemorative Medal for the 125th Anniversary of the Confederation of Canada presented by the Governor General of Canada; and the outstanding research awards for 1996,1997, and 1998 presented by the National Science Council of Taiwan.