Heather J Lee 29th Lorne Cancer Conference 2017

Heather J Lee

Dr Heather Lee is a biomedical scientist with experience in epigenetics, cancer research and developmental biology. After completing her PhD in the Cancer Research Program at the Garvan Institute, Dr Lee undertook post-doctoral training in Cambridge UK. Under the supervision of Prof Wolf Reik, Dr Lee developed world-first methods for analysis of DNA methylation in single cells and applied these methods to understand epigenetic plasticity in embryonic stem cells (Nat Meth 11:817, Nat Meth 13:229-32, Nat Commun 9:781). Since 2017, Dr Lee has been leading an independent research team based at the Hunter Medical Research Institute. Her work is investigating epigenetic heterogeneity in Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML) and has been funded by a Cancer Institute NSW Early Career Fellowship, an NHMRC New Investigator Project Grant, and an NHMRC Ideas Grant. Her team continue to develop single-cell methods for epigenetic analysis (Sci Rep 12:5776) and have used these methods to reveal treatment-induced DNA methylation heterogeneity in AML. Dr Lee has been an investigator on 16 successful grants with a total value >$4M ($1.4M as lead applicant). She has 25 papers from the last 10 years, including 14 as lead/senior author. Her work has appeared in top-ranking journals (eg Nature, Nature Meth, Cancer Cell, Cell Stem Cell), and is highly cited (mean FWCI = 6.31 since 2012). Dr Lee’s research leadership was recognised by the 2018 Metcalf Prize from the National Stem Cell Foundation of Australia.