Duane M. Lee

Lee explores galactic archaeology and near­-field cosmology with a focus on the origin of stellar populations in the Milky Way, dwarf galaxies and the assembly of the galactic halo. He uses techniques like statistical chemical tagging of halo stars and tracing of multiple stellar generations in galactic chemical evolution modeling to uncover and help constrain the nature of nucleosynthetic yields and sites for chemical elements such as neutron-capture elements. His work as a Fisk-Vanderbilt Bridge postdoctoral fellow has involved mentoring astronomy MA students at Fisk University with the aim of giving them the extra support and guidance they need to excel in classes and gain admission in a PhD program at Vanderbilt or elsewhere in the country.

While at MIT, Lee has also created a new outreach program at MIT (with participating graduate students) called Sidewalk Astrogazers to bring optical astronomy to a diverse group of people in the Boston/Cambridge area, in addition to conducting research.