Lei completed her PhD in 2022 at the Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, under the supervision of Professor Qian-fei Wang. Her doctoral research delved into both normal megakaryopoiesis and blood disease. She employed murine and human systems to investigate how megakaryocytes become polyploid and platelet production (J Thromb Haemost, 2024). She also discovered a potential new disease gene related to the rare disease HLH, called NBAS (J Hematol Oncol, 2022). Lei joined Dr. David Scadden’s laboratory in April 2024, where she is investigating how physiologic stress affects HSCs’ heterogeneity and fate responses.