Danielle N. Lee

Last updated
Danielle N. Lee
NationalityAmerican
Education
Known forThe Urban Scientist (blog)
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions
Thesis Individuals Differences in Exploratory Behavior of Prairie Voles, Microtus ochrogaster  (2010)
Doctoral advisor Zuleyma Tang-Martínez
Other academic advisorsAlexander G. Ophir
Website about.me/DNLee

Danielle N. Lee is an American assistant professor of biology at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, [1] best known for her science blogging and outreach efforts focused on increasing minority participation in STEM fields. Her research interests focus on the connections between ecology and evolution and its contribution to animal behavior. In 2017, Lee was selected as a National Geographic Emerging Explorer. [2] With this position Lee traveled to Tanzania to research the behavior and biology of landmine-sniffing African giant pouched rats. [3]

Contents

Early life and education

Danielle N. Lee was born originally from South Memphis, Tennessee and she earned her bachelor's degree from Tennessee Technological University in 1996. While she intended to go into veterinary medicine, after being rejected from veterinary school four times, she began studying olfactory behavior in meadow voles and found her passion to pursue academic research. [4] In 2000, Lee earned her MS from the University of Memphis, and in 2010 Lee graduated from the University of Missouri–St. Louis with a Ph.D. in Biology. [1] In her thesis, Lee proposed a new system of describing animal personality traits from more subjective, emotional descriptors, to observational adjectives. [5]

Research and career

As of 2017, Lee teaches mammalogy and urban ecology at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. [1] Her research specializes in rodent behavior in both urban and rural settings. Her current focus of study is the African giant pouched rat, examining the extent to which they exhibit behavioral syndromes and the potential role of genetics in these behavioral differences. [6] [7] Lee has expanded her research to examine behavioral differences of small rodents across urban gradients in the St. Louis Metropolitan region. [1] In 2012, Lee traveled to and lived in Tanzania to collect data about the African giant pouched rat for the "Wild Life of Our Homes" project. Centering on female rat biology, Lee aims to increase research about female biology that has been understudied in the animal kingdom.

Advocacy and public service

From 2006 to 2011, Lee published the blog Urban Science Adventures! [8] before joining the Scientific American Blog Network, where she wrote The Urban Scientist blog from 2011 to 2016. [9] Through her posts, Lee covered her experience as a research scientist, issues relating to STEM diversity, and urban ecology (what she calls "science you can see in your backyard"). [5] Her blog aimed to connect the scientific community with under-served and underrepresented populations, primarily African-American youth, through scientific explanations that were easily understandable. [10]

Lee's outreach efforts focus on sharing science with the general public [11] and the under-served, [12] particularly through outdoor experiences and social media outlets. [13] Lee founded the National Science and Technology News Service, [14] a now-defunct media advocacy group focused on increasing interest in STEM and science news coverage within the African-American community. She has received many honors for her efforts to increase minority participation in STEM fields, and was named a top TED fellow 2015. [15] Lee also avidly uses Twitter as a platform to share her science and outreach, and has been recognized as a top scientist to follow on Twitter. [16]

For the show and podcast the Story Collider Lee explained that she has had to work 'twice as hard' as a woman of color in science; [17] in 2013, Lee was invited to contribute to the science website Biology Online by a pseudonymous editor named "Ofek". When Lee declined to contribute to the website without compensation, Ofek allegedly responded by asking whether Lee was "an urban scientist or an urban whore". [18] Lee rebuked Ofek on The Urban Scientist; however, the editor-in-chief of Scientific American, Mariette DiChristina, quickly removed Lee's response from the network. Although the removal of the blog post was allegedly due to legal concerns, Scientific American was widely seen as censoring Lee, causing outrage. [19] [20] [21] [22] Ultimately, Ofek was fired by Biology Online because of the incident. [23]

In June 2020, Lee was a contributor to the #ShutDownSTEM and #ShutDownAcademia initiative, organized around the Black Lives Matter protests and demonstrations following the murder of George Floyd. [24] The group called for STEM and other academic departments across the United States to hold all daily activities, including teaching, research work, and service responsibilities, on June 10, 2020, in order to reflect on how racism and privilege may affect those in their academic spaces; participate in local protests, and; learn about the history of anti-Black violence and racism. [25]

Selected awards and honors

Selected works and publications

Personal life

Lee is related to the Memphis-based civil rights activists The Lee Sisters.[ citation needed ]

Related Research Articles

<i>Scientific American</i> American monthly science magazine

Scientific American, informally abbreviated SciAm or sometimes SA, is an American popular science magazine. Many scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it, with more than 150 Nobel Prize-winners being featured since its inception.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Giant pouched rat</span> Genus of rodents

The giant pouched rats of sub-Saharan Africa are large muroid rodents.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Male pregnancy</span> Pregnancy in males

Male pregnancy is the incubation of one or more embryos or fetuses by organisms of the male sex in some species. Most species that reproduce by sexual reproduction are heterogamous—females producing larger gametes (ova) and males producing smaller gametes (sperm). In nearly all animal species, offspring are carried by the female until birth, but in fish of the family Syngnathidae, males perform that function.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dmitry Belyayev (zoologist)</span> Russian geneticist and academic

Dmitry Konstantinovich Belyayev was a Soviet geneticist and academician who served as director of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics (IC&G) of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, from 1959 to 1985. His decades-long effort to breed domesticated silver foxes was described by The New York Times as “arguably the most extraordinary breeding experiment ever conducted.” A 2010 article in Scientific American stated that Belyayev “may be the man most responsible for our understanding of the process by which wolves were domesticated into our canine companions.”

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elaine Fuchs</span> American cell biologist

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gambian pouched rat</span> Species of rodent

The Gambian pouched rat, also commonly known as the African giant pouched rat, is a species of nocturnal pouched rat of the giant pouched rat genus Cricetomys, in the family Nesomyidae. It is among the largest muroids in the world, growing to about 0.9 m (3 ft) long, including the tail, which makes up half of its total length. It is widespread in sub-Saharan Africa, ranging from Senegal to Kenya and from Angola to Mozambique from sea level to 2,000 m (6,600 ft).

Brigid L. M. Hogan FRS is a British developmental biologist noted for her contributions to mammalian development, stem cell research and transgenic technology and techniques. She is currently a Professor in the Department of Cell Biology at Duke University, Born in the UK, she became an American citizen in 2000.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hemimeridae</span> Family of earwig insects

Hemimeridae is a family of earwigs in the suborder Neodermaptera. Hemimeridae was formerly considered a suborder, Hemimerina, but was reduced in rank to family and included in the new suborder Neodermaptera.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Southern giant pouched rat</span> African species of rodent

The southern giant pouched rat is a species of rodent in the family Nesomyidae. It is distributed in the savannah of East and Southern Africa.

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References

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  7. Cullin, Cassandra O.; Sellers, Matthew S.; Rogers, Erin R.; Scott, Kathleen E.; Lee, Danielle N.; Ophir, Alexander G.; Jackson, Todd A. (October 2017). "Intestinal Parasites and Anthelmintic Treatments in a Laboratory Colony of Wild-caught African Pouched Rats (Cricetomys ansorgei)". Comparative Medicine. 67 (5): 420–429. PMC   5621570 . PMID   28935004 . Retrieved 2019-03-01.
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