Lea Steele is a professor at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA. She received a BA from Northwestern University, completed a fellowship at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Center for Infectious Diseases, and earned a Ph.D. from the University of Texas School of Public Health, UT Health Sciences Center. Dr. Steele is an environmental epidemiologist and neuroepidemiologist whose current research is focused on the long-term health consequences of military service in the 1990–1991 Persian Gulf War. Her collaborative projects include population studies to identify the patterns of illness affecting Gulf War veterans and determine the etiologic factors that have caused or contributed to the development of Gulf War illness, as well as studies characterizing the neurological, immune, and endocrine processes that drive the symptoms of Gulf War illness.