Dr. Yvonne Lee is the Helen Myers McLoraine Professor of Rheumatology and Professor of Medicine (Rheumatology) and Preventive Medicine (Epidemiology) at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Her research program is driven by her passion for enhancing the quality of life of patients with rheumatic diseases. Pain is the primary reason patients seek rheumatologic care, but pain is poorly understood and poorly managed. As such, Dr. Lee’s mission is to improve the management of pain in patients with systemic rheumatic diseases, using interventions targeted to specific pain mechanisms. Her NIH-funded research seeks to identify modifiable clinical factors and neurobiological pathways that lead to the development of chronic pain, resistant to treatment with disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs. Her research group uses quantitative sensory testing to characterize pain mechanisms and brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to examine functional connectivity between pain networks. She is also actively expanding her interdisciplinary research program into the burgeoning areas of sleep and circadian rhythms and translational studies examining serum biomarkers of pain. Her contributions to scientific investigation include: 1) developing a multi-site research network to comprehensively phenotype pain in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), 2) identifying central nervous system (CNS) pathways of ascending facilitation and descending inhibition that contribute to chronic pain in RA, and 3) demonstrating the link between dysregulated CNS pain processing and clinically important outcomes (e.g., pain intensity, response to RA therapies). Dr. Lee is also a leader in research training and has mentored medical students, residents, fellows, and faculty, many of whom are developing independent research programs focused on improving clinical outcomes in individuals with systemic rheumatic diseases. She is Director of the Northwestern University Department of Medicine Physician Scientist Training Program and Co-Director of the Division of Rheumatology's T32 Program. She also has an NIH K24 grant to support her mentoring efforts locally as well as nationally.