Lei earned her Ph.D. in Plant Biology from Pennsylvania State University in the USA, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. She holds dual bachelor's degrees in Biological Sciences and Economics from Peking University in China. Before joining Wiley, Lei served as a Senior Editor at Nature Plants, primarily based in New York.
With over fifteen years of experience in scientific research and academic publishing, she has authored more than sixty research articles, reviews, and commentaries in various international journals, including Nature Plants, New Phytologist, PNAS, Current Opinion in Plant Biology, Plant Cell, Molecular Plant, The Arabidopsis Book, Plant Physiology, Advanced Biology, and Modern Agriculture etc.
Lei currently oversees the strategic positioning, team development, and sustainability of several life science journals at Wiley, such as Global Change Biology, GCB-bioenergy, Cell Proliferation, Land Degradation and Development, Journal of Agronomy and Crop Science, Grass and Forage Science, iMeta, mLife, Journal of Plant Nutrition and Soil Science, Animal Research and One Health, New Plant Protection, iMetaomics etc. She is also actively involved in Wiley's scientific editorial teams for multiple journals, including Advanced Science and Advanced Biology, and serves as a co-EiC for Modern Agriculture.