Rate My Professor Ser Huay Lee

Janice Ser Huay Lee is an Associate Professor and Assistant Chair (Student Life) at the Asian School of the Environment, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and Principal Investigator of the Coupled Human and Natural Systems Lab at the Earth Observatory of Singapore. Her research centers on socio-ecological systems, rural land use and land cover change, biodiversity conservation, human livelihoods, Southeast Asia's oil palm industry, food security in Asia, fire activity in Sumatra, ecosystem restoration, cropland abandonment, tropical peatland management, and the socio-ecological vulnerability to hazards such as tropical cyclones and flooding in Southeast Asia.

Lee holds a PhD in Environmental Systems Science from ETH Zurich (2013), followed by postdoctoral fellowships at ETH Zurich’s Institute of Terrestrial Ecosystems (November 2013–July 2014) and Princeton University’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (September 2014–June 2016). She joined Nanyang Technological University in January 2017 as Assistant Professor, later promoted to Associate Professor. Key publications include "The environmental impacts of palm oil in context" (Nature Plants, 2020), "Relative contributions of the logging, fiber, oil palm, and mining industries to forest loss in Indonesia" (Conservation Letters, 2015), "Environmental impacts of large-scale oil palm enterprises exceed that of smallholdings in Indonesia" (Conservation Letters, 2014), "Degradation of Southeast Asian tropical peatlands and integrated strategies for their better management and restoration" (Journal of Applied Ecology, 2021), "Oil palm smallholder yields and incomes constrained by harvesting practices and type of smallholder management in Indonesia" (Agronomy for Sustainable Development, 2014), and "Toward clearer skies: Challenges in regulating transboundary haze in Southeast Asia" (Environmental Science & Policy, 2016). Her research has garnered over 3,300 citations. She teaches the "Coupled Human and Natural Systems" course.