For as long as he can remember, Cin-Ty Lee has been interested in geology. As a kid, he tagged along with his father, a geophysicist, and Doug Morton, a field geologist, on various geology field trips in southern California. He got his B.A. from UC Berkeley in 1996 and did a senior honor’s thesis with George Brimhall, Jr. This was his first introduction to the Sierra Nevada. He received a PhD in 2001 from Harvard University with Roberta Rudnick as his advisor. His thesis topic was on the origin and evolution of continental lithospheric mantle. He then spent a little over a year as a post-doctoral fellow with Gerald Wasserburg at Caltech looking at platinum group element geochemistry in marine sediments. He has been an assistant professor at Rice University since 2002. Cin-Ty’s core is geochemistry in the broadest sense. He uses geochemistry and petrology to interface with geophysics, geodynamics, and field geology. His main topics of interest are the origin and evolution of continents, mantle geochemistry and dynamics, and the petrogenesis of igneous and metamorphic rocks. However, most recently, research with his students and post-docts have expanded into other projects: element partitioning studies, early planetary differentiation, serpentinization mechanisms and the global water cycle, mobility of fluid-mobile elements in subduction zones, and the relationships between soil formation, groundwater flow, and mass wasting in continental weathering. He spends his spare time studying, painting, and writing about birds. His last memorable life bird was a Wandering Albatross that he spotted from shore this past summer near Port Fairy, Australia.