He received a B.S. degree in microbiology from Northern Arizona University and a Ph.D. in microbiology from Oregon State University. He did postdoctoral work at New Mexico State University before becoming a Project Leader at the University of Idaho’s Environmental Biotechnology Institute. He was an Assistant Professor in the Microbiology and Molecular Genetics Department at the University of Vermont’s College of Medicine before joining MSUB. Dr. Lewis’s research is in the area of microbial physiology; developing understanding of how microbes, primarily bacteria, achieve some of the novel metabolic traits they display. For many years the aim of those studies was toward biological pollutant transformation. More recently he has focused on iron and sulfur metabolism by the human pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa.