Lee Siegel, a native of Portland, Ore., is science news specialist for University of Utah Communications. He is a graduate of the University of Oregon and earned a master's degree at the Columbia University School of Journalism in New York. He began his career working for newspapers in Washington state (1976-1981), and was a member of the staff of The Daily News of Longview, Wash., when the staff won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. Siegel joined the Associated Press in Seattle in 1981, and then transferred in 1982 to the AP's Los Angeles bureau, where he served as one of the wire service's national science writers during 1984-1993. Siegel was science editor for The Salt Lake Tribune during 1993-2000, a science writer for SPACE.com for a few months in 2000 before mass layoffs at that company, and then joined the University of Utah in December 2000. With University of Utah geophysicist Robert B. Smith, Siegel is co-author of “Windows into the Earth: The Geologic Story of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks,” Oxford University Press.