Dr. Jiyoung Lee is a Professor in the Department of Food Science and Technology and has a joint appointment with the Division of Environmental Health Science, College of Public Health. She is a Co-Director of Thematic Program of Ecology, Epidemiology, and Population Health at the Infectious Disease Institute. She received a PhD in Environmental Health Sciences from University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, MI) and MS and BS degrees in Microbiology from Seoul National University (Seoul, S. Korea). The main theme of her research is tracking pathogens, cyanotoxins, and antibiotic resistance in the nexus of water-food environments and emerging exposure pathways, and studying their linkage to health outcomes, including gut microbiome and cancers, on regional, national, and global scales. Lee’s laboratory also seeks sustainable solutions for improving human health and food safety, such as beneficial use of microbes in hydroponic systems and cyanophage treatment for toxic cyanobacteria.
Area of Expertise: Harmful algal blooms and cyanotoxins, with emphasis on emerging health risks with interdisciplinary approach, including metagenomics, metabolomics, and geospatial tools. Microbiome in environments and hosts. Microbial source tracking and zoonotic pathogen transmission. Water-food-climate nexus.
Research Interest: My main theme of research is microbial contamination in environments that leads to human exposure and its linkage to health outcomes. I am focusing on understanding pathways of microbial transmission, microbial dynamics and interactions within microbial communities in multi-temporal and spatial scales, and effects on gastrointestinal illnesses and cancers. My lab has focused on several areas in water and food matrices and has studied enteric bacteria and viruses, cyanobacteria, cyanotoxins, and antibiotic resistance using interdisciplinary approach, including metagenomic, metabolomic, epidemiological, and geospatial tools.
