Jiyoung Lee, PhD
Chair and Professor
Co-Director, Ecology Epidemiology and Population Health Program, Infectious Disease Institute
Environmental Health Sciences
“My mission is "To create and sustain healthy environments for people worldwide." At Ohio State, I feel most fortunate that my life mission, career vision and what I have been doing with my lab and interdisciplinary teams are well aligned, and we contribute to improving and protecting environmental and human health.”
Biography
My main theme of research is contamination of pathogens and microbe-derived metabolites (cyanotoxins) in environmental matrices that leads to direct human exposures and its linkage to health risks. I am focusing on microbial transmission dynamics, emerging exposure pathways, interactions within microbial community and with hosts in multi-temporal and spatial scales. My Environmental Microbiology and One Health Lab (EMOHL) has focused on One Health and One Water paradigm for solving the pathogen and antibiotic resistance problems. My research team use an interdisciplinary approach, including microbial source tracking, metagenomics, epidemiology, and geospatial tools. The main research topics in my lab are as follows;
- Heath risks from cyanotoxin exposure (liver disease, cancer, neurodegenerative diseases)
- Impact of environmental exposure on microbiome and resistome
- Cyanobacteria, cyanophage and toxin ecology
- Water-food-climate nexus: Ecology of emerging infectious diseases
- Sustainable intervention of pathogen and antimicrobial resistance spread
- Wastewater-based epidemiology of COVID-19
Education
- PhD
- Environmental Health Sciences, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan
- MS
- Microbiology, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea
- BS
- Microbiology, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea
Research interests
Heath risks from cyanotoxin exposure (liver disease, cancer, neurodegenerative diseases); Impact of environmental exposure on microbiome & resistome; Cyanobacteria, cyanophage and toxin ecology; Water-food-climate nexus: Ecology of emerging infectious diseases; Sustainable intervention of pathogen and antimicrobial resistance spread; Wastewater-based epidemiology of COVID-19
- OARDC Distinguished Junior Faculty Research Award, Ohio State University (2017)
- Plimpton Outstanding Teacher Award, Ohio State University (2016)
Select publications
- Chen, Z., Li, L., Kim, M., Lancaster, E., Lee, J., & Costa Jr, O. S. (2025). Characterization of microbial communities in the rhizosphere and water of a field-scale artificial floating island system for nutrient removal. Environmental Pollution, 126992. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2025.126992
- Lai, YR, Lin, Z, Tomashefski, D, Dayton, E, Whitacre, S, Lee, J, Basta N. (2025). Effect of soil properties on microcystin mobility and bioavailability in land-applied drinking water treatment residuals. Science of the Total Environment. 998, 180259. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2025.180259
- Mollenkopf, D. F., Lee, S., Ballash, G. A., Sulliván, S. M. P., Lee, J., & Wittum, T. E. (2025). Carbapenemase-producing Enterobacterales and their carbapenemase genes are stably recovered across the wastewater-watershed ecosystem nexus. Science of the Total Environment, 975, 179241. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2025.179241
- Lancaster, E, Winston, R, Martin, J, Lee, J. (2024). Urban stormwater green infrastructure: Evaluating the public health service role of bioretention using microbial source tracking and bacterial community analyses. Water Research. 259,121818. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2024.121818
- Mills, M, Mollenkopf, D, Wittum, T, Sullivan, M, Lee, J. (2024). One Health Threat of Treated Wastewater Discharge in Urban Ohio Rivers: Implications for Surface Water and Fish Gut Microbiome and Resistome. Environmental Science & Technology.58(30): 13402-13414. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.3c09070
- Mills, M, Davis, A, Lancaster, E, Choi, B, Martin, J, Winston, R, Lee, J. (2024). Longitudinal Analysis of Urban Stormwater Microbiome and Resistome from Watersheds with and without Green Infrastructure using Long-Read Sequencing. Water Research. 259, 121873. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2024.121873
- Lee, J, Lee, S, Hu, C, Marion, J. (2023). Beyond cyanotoxins: Increased Legionella, antibiotic resistance genes in western Lake Erie water and disinfection-byproducts in their finished water. Frontiers in Microbiology. 14, 1233327.
- https://doi.org/10.3389/fmicb.2023.1233327
- Ai, Y, He, F, Lancaster, E, Lee, J. 2022. Application of machine learning for multi-community COVID-19 outbreak predictions with wastewater surveillance. PLoSOne. 17(11), e0277154. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0277154
- Lee, S, Choi, B, Kim, S, Kim, J, Kang, D, Lee, J. 2022. Relationship Between Freshwater Harmful Algal Blooms and Neurodegenerative Disease Incidence Rates in South Korea. Environmental Health. 21(1):116. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12940-022-00935-y
- Lee, J, Lee, S, Mayta, A, Mrdjen, I, Weghorst, C. Knobloch, K. 2020. Microcystis Toxin-Mediated Tumor Promotion and Toxicity Lead to Shifts in Mouse Gut Microbiome. Ecotoxicology & Environmental Safety. 206:111204. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoenv.2020.111204