Robert Edward Lee was educated at Cornell University (BS, 1960 64) and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (Ph.D., 1966 71) and served as a Platoon leader in the US Army First Infantry Division (1964 66). He was Lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg (1971 77), Associate Professor at Shiraz (Pahlavi) University, Shiraz, Iran (1977 79), Fellow of Schepens Eye Research Institute and Harvard Medical School, Boston (1979 81) and is currently Coordinator of Biomedical Sciences at Colorado State University, a post he has held since 1981.