Bio


Seung Yon (Sue) Rhee is a Senior Staff Member of Plant Biology Department at Carnegie Institution for Science and Professor (by courtesy) in Biology Department, Stanford University. Her group strives to uncover molecular mechanisms underlying adaptive traits in the face of heat, drought, nutrient limitation, and pests. Dr. Rhee’s group studies a variety of plants including models, crops, medicinal and desert plants. Her group employs computational modeling and targeted laboratory testing to study mechanisms of adaptation, functions of novel genes, organization and function of metabolic networks, and chemical and neuronal code of plant-animal interactions. Her group is also interested in developing translational research programs involving biomass maximization under drought in bioenergy crops. More recently, Dr. Rhee has spearheaded a grassroots community building effort called the Plant Cell Atlas initiative, which strives to map all the molecular determinants of plant cells in order to understand and engineer them. Dr. Rhee received her B.A. in biology from Swarthmore College in 1992 and a Ph.D. in biology from Stanford University in 1997. She has been an investigator at Carnegie’s Plant Biology Department since 1999.