Dr. Lee E. Gray is the Senior Associate Dean in the College of Arts + Architecture at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and a Professor of Architectural History in the School of Architecture. He received his Ph.D. in architectural history from Cornell University, his Masters in architectural history from the University of Virginia, and undergraduate degrees in architecture from Iowa State University.

He is the author of From Ascending Rooms to Express Elevators: A History of the Passenger Elevator in the 19th Century. Since 2003 he has written monthly articles on the history of vertical transportation for Elevator World magazine. Current projects include a book on the history of escalators and moving sidewalks.

He has appeared on the History Channel in Modern Marvels – Building a Skyscraper (2004), the National Geographic Channel in Big, Bigger, Biggest – Airport (2008) and on PBS in NOVA: Trapped in an Elevator (2010). He has also been interviewed by BBC 4 Radio – The Indispensables: Lifts (2004), by NPR’s All Things Considered – “Inside The Genius, But Asocial Elevator’s Brain” (2010), by NPR’s Talk of the Nation (2012), by The Moncrieff show, News-talk 106-108, Dublin, Ireland (2012), by The Mooney Show, RTE Radio, Dublin, Ireland (2012) and interviewed for The Why Factor (BBC World Service) “Why do we behave so oddly inside lifts/elevators?” (2012).