Y. Heather Lee, PhD (Korean: 이영아)
Instructor in Investigation, Massachusetts General Hospital · Harvard Medical School
Workstream Lead, Genomics & Biobanks, Broad Trauma Initiative
Bio
I am a psychiatric epidemiologist integrating genomics, metabolomics, electronic health records, and causal inference to understand the interplay between mental and physical health.
At MGH, I have led projects funded by NIH, research foundations, and industry, leveraging large-scale, biobank data and contributed to international consortia including PsycheMERGE, the Covid-19 Global Mental Health Consortium (CGMHC), and the International Hundred K+ Cohorts Consortium.
At the Broad Trauma Initiative, where I work with Dr. Karestan Koenen and Dr. Jason Buenrostro to understand the biological mechanisms through which trauma and adversity lead to adverse mental and physical health outcomes, leveraging data at the cellular to population levels.
Research Interests
News
- Paper Mar 2026 New preprint on medRxiv (corresponding author)Would Lifting Versus Maintaining COVID-19 Containment Policies Have Reduced Psychological Distress in the US?
- Paper Feb 2026 Paper accepted at Epidemiology and HealthAssociation between cardiovascular health measured by Life's Essential 8 and depressive symptoms
- Paper Jan 2026 Paper accepted at Molecular PsychiatryTowards Scalable Biomarker Discovery in PTSD: A Lab-Wide Association Study in All of Us
- Paper Dec 2025 Paper accepted at Journal of Asian HealthBuilding an Inclusive Future for Asian and NHPI Populations in the NIH All of Us Research Program
- Talk Oct 2025 Invited lecture at Trauma Epi Lab, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public HealthLong-term Health Consequences of Child Maltreatment: A PheWAS in the NIH All of Us Research Program
- Paper Jul 2025 Paper published in Translational PsychiatryExamining the genetic links between clusters of immune-mediated diseases and psychiatric disorders
