Ke Dong received her Ph.D. in Entomology from Cornell University in 1993. After a short stay at the University of Kentucky, first as a postdoctoral associate and then a research assistant professor, she relocated to Michigan State University (MSU) in 1995. Currently, she is a full professor in the Department of Entomology and a faculty member in the Genetics and Neuroscience programs at MSU.Ke Dong’s research interest in ion channels and insecticide toxicology can be traced back to her graduate school years in Dr. Jeff Scott’s laboratory at Cornell University. There she took toxicological, pharmacological and molecular approaches to understand the mechanism of pyrethroid (insecticide) resistance in the German cockroach. Her work demonstrated that pyrethroid resistance in the German cockroach is linked to the sodium channel locus, suggesting that mutations in the sodium channel are responsible for pyrethroid resistance.
