Melissa Lee, PhD

Dr. Melissa Lee is the Director of the Diagnostics Accelerator at the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation, where she manages the DxA's digital and ocular biomarker portfolios and leads the science for SpeechDx. Her work at the ADDF focuses on scientific strategy, partnership development, and AI and digital biomarker innovation.

Melissa has been a scientist since she was 16, when she started working in a lab at Vanderbilt University. She completed her PhD and postdoctoral research at Columbia University, where she studied glial cells in autism and brain development under Drs. Carol Mason and Mimi Shirasu-Hiza. She has co-authored 7 publications including in Neuron and the Journal of Neuroscience, as well as a chapter on the eye-to-brain connection in the 12th edition of Adler's Physiology of the Eye.