Meet the Lee Lab!
Laura Lee - PI
Laura Lee is an incoming Assistant Professor in the Biology Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She completed her PhD in Dominique Bergmann's lab at Stanford University, where she studied the role of histone modifications in stable cell fate commitment in the stomatal lineage. She then completed her postdoctoral work in Kenneth Birnbaum's lab at New York University, where she characterized a role for the metabolite glutathione in regulating the cell cycle and cellular reprogramming during root tip regeneration. She will work to unravel the mechanistic basis through which glutathione and other metabolites regulate cellular processes in her independent group.
lrlee@unc.edu
Steven McKenzie - Postdoc
Steven McKenzie received his bachelor’s degree in cell and molecular biology from Grand Valley State University, Michigan in 2018. He went on to complete his PhD in biochemistry in Sujith Puthiyaveetil’s lab at Purdue University in 2024 where he studied the role of reactive oxygen species and post-translational modifications in the turnover of the Photosystem II protein complex. Steven is interested in mechanisms of redox regulation and their influence on plant development.
Medhavinee Mijar - Research Specialist
Medha will join the Lee Lab as a Research Specialist. Previously, she worked in Prof. Philip Benfey’s lab at Duke University, where she gained extensive experience in NGS workflows, plant transformation, and imaging. She also worked in Dr. Mingyuan Zhu’s lab at Texas A&M University, where her research focused on submergence responses in Oryza sativa. She is passionate about exploring the molecular and physiological mechanisms that enable plants to adapt to challenging conditions and is excited to bring her experience to support research efforts in the Lee Lab.