Dr. Michael Lee is an Assistant Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Appalachia College of Pharmacy (UACP), joining the faculty in 2007. Dr Lee attended the University of New Hampshire, graduating with a BS degree in Biochemistry in 1992. In 1993, he moved to Colorado where he worked for Xenometrix, Inc., a biotechnology start-up company developing gene expression-based toxicology assays. He attended the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center (UCHSC) in Denver, earning a PhD in 2003 while in the Neuroscience Program and the Department of Psychiatry. His post-doctoral research work was split between the UCHSC School of Pharmacy and the Institute for Behavioral Genetics (IBG) at the University of Colorado in Boulder prior to joining UACP.

Dr. Lee's research interests center on how genes affect the action of drugs of abuse in the brain, particularly in relation to neuropsychiatric disorders. For his dissertation work, Dr. Lee studied nicotinic receptors in schizophrenia, focusing primarily on how anti-psychotic medication and genomic structure regulates RNA and protein expression of nicotinic receptors in the brain. While at the UCHSC School of Pharmacy, Dr. Lee focused on identifying candidate genes underlying acute sensitivity and tolerance development to ethanol using selected inbred mice strains. At IBG, his research focused on using genetic knockout mice of different nicotinic receptor subunits to study the effects of drugs of abuse such as PCP and ethanol on animal behavioral paradigms related to neuropsychiatric disorders.

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