Research Interests

Lewin’s current research interest is in mammalian genome evolution as it relates to adaptation, speciation, and the origins of cancer, and he serves as the Chair of the Earth BioGenome Project Working Group. He is the Robert and Rosabel Osborne Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of Evolution and Ecology at the University of California, Davis, where he also holds a joint appointment in the School of Veterinary Medicine and is a Fellow of the John Muir Institute for the Environment. From 2011-2016, he served as the UC Davis Vice Chancellor for Research. Prior to that he spent 27 years at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he held the E.W. and J.M. Gutgsell Endowed Professorship in Immunogenetics, with a primary appointment in the Department of Animal Sciences and was a member of the Center for Advanced Study. Lewin served as Director of the University of Illinois Biotechnology Center, Founding Director of the W.M. Keck Center for Comparative and Functional Genomics, and Founding Director of the Institute for Genomic Biology.