Rate My Professor Heather Lee

Lee's research centres on epigenetic regulation of development and cancer cell plasticity, particularly dynamic DNA methylation in acute myeloid leukaemia (AML), haematological tumours, and heterogeneous chemotherapeutic responses. She pioneered single-cell genome-wide bisulfite sequencing (scBS-seq), enabling epigenetic analysis at up to 48.4% of CpG sites per cell, as detailed in her highly cited Nature Methods paper (2014). Other key publications include 'Parallel single-cell sequencing links transcriptional and epigenetic heterogeneity' (Nature Methods, 2016), 'scNMT-seq enables joint profiling of chromatin accessibility, DNA methylation and transcription in single cells' (Nature Communications, 2018), and 'Single-cell epigenomics in cancer: charting a course to clinical impact' (Epigenomics, 2020). With over 60 publications, she has secured $9,580,880 across 23 grants, leading NHMRC Investigator ($2,199,113, 2023-2027) and Ideas Grants ($561,422, 2020-2022), Cancer Institute NSW Fellowship ($538,000, 2017-2021), and others. Awards include the Metcalf Prize for Stem Cell Research ($50,000, 2018). She has delivered keynotes at the Epigenetics User Group Symposium (2018) and Oz Single Cells (2017-2018), influencing single-cell epigenomics and advancing epigenetic therapies for cancer relapse prevention.