Patty J. Lee, MD

Dr. Patty J. Lee received her Bachelor’s and Medical Degrees from Brown University in Providence, RI. She was an Osler Internal Medicine resident at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (Janeway firm) in Baltimore, MD, where she remained for fellowship training in pulmonary, critical care & sleep medicine. After fellowship, in 1998, Dr. Lee was recruited as Instructor at Yale University School of Medicine, where she remained until 2019, when she was recruited to Duke University School of Medicine as Chief of the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care. Her career as a physician-scientist led to discoveries that link innate immune signaling in lung endothelial cells and the vasculature to endogenous, cytoprotective immune-antioxidant mechanisms, thus creating new paradigms in our understanding of innate immune signaling. Her teams’ scientific discoveries led to the identification of novel immune-senescence pathways in healthy and diseased lungs, culminating in the recently awarded Senescent Cell Evaluations in Normal Tissues (U54) from the NIH Commons Fund. In line with impactful, clinically-relevant discoveries in lung vascular molecular-cellular mechanisms, Dr. Lee has successfully mentored and advised junior faculty, research scientists, trainees and students (>45) across institutions, inspiring most to pursue medicine and/or biomedical research. During her tenure at Duke, despite COVID-19, she expanded her research, mentoring and leadership skills by spearheading interdisciplinary, translational, and clinically impactful projects while building teams of scientists, project managers, coordinators and trainees to embark on significantly well-funded research awards. At the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Dr. Lee will build and lead an inaugural IDEAS Center/Institute - Interdisciplinary Experimental Aging Sciences.