Tali Lee

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Early Career

Dr. Tali Lee is a biologist and university professor whose main interests lie in plant physiological ecology. However, Dr. Lee began her career studying sports science, an interest which began due to her background as a college athlete. Her main focus in this field was in studying the physiology of stress on the human body, and she had a strong passion for teaching.

Dr. Lee dabbled in a myriad of fields, from architecture to art, before discovering her love of biology. “I never had that ‘Oh I want to be a biologist’ sort of thing. I always wondered what it would be like, to have some influence or something early on that made it clear to me that I wanted to go into biology,” Lee said in an interview, “I actually took quite a while to figure that out.” It wasn’t until she had to take extra courses in plant biology to pursue her plan to teach at the high school level that she began to be interested in the physiological responses of plants.

After her mother passed away, she took a year off grad school and moved back home to work as a research technician in Arizona. The project she worked on, similar to Cedar Creek’s BioCON, utilized free-air carbon dioxide enrichment, though their subject was wheat. This allowed her to better understand how to set up and run field experiments. It was her work in this Arizona experiment that would lead her to Cedar Creek.

“It just all clicked,” Lee concluded, “I’m so fortunate because I feel like I really did find what was perfect for me.”

Connections to Cedar Creek

Six years after receiving her Bachelor’s degree, Lee began working towards her Ph.D through the University of Minnesota, under the mentorship of Dr. Peter Reich, whose research at Cedar Creek continues even today. She credits Reich for much of her development as a scientist. His lab created a sense of community that fostered a supportive and collaborative pursuit of quality science that also helped her with her feelings of imposter syndrome. Dr. Lee’s work at Cedar Creek began in 1997, just as the BioCON experiment was being built. The research behind her Ph.D thesis came from these first few years of the experiment. BioCON has since continued to be a facet of her career throughout the years during which she has mentored undergraduate interns. There have been many summers where she and her students could be found hauling gas exchange equipment among the rings of BioCON.

Current Work

Dr. Lee currently works as a professor at the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire, and maintains a continued relationship with the Cedar Creek site through her work and the work of her students. She feels very fortunate to have this relationship, as it provides her with many opportunities to work with undergraduate students. She believes that the community structure of Cedar Creek is important in helping younger scientists to grow through interaction with more experienced researchers while allowing them to discover their passions. Dr. Lee also collaborates with many of her former students who are working both within and outside academic spaces, including a recent project with a company looking into plant-beneficial microbes as a substitute for fertilizer. BioCON field manager Kally Worm was one of Dr. Lee’s first students at UW Eau Claire, and merits Lee as the reason she is here at Cedar Creek today. Dr. Lee is very passionate about how biology, especially introductory biology, is taught, and feels it is important to give students the hands-on experience she herself never had as an undergraduate.

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Acknowledgement

Special thanks to Dr. Lee for allowing us to interview her and share her story for this spotlight!